In January 1649, after years of civil war, King Charles I stood trial in a specially convened English court on charges of treason, murder, and other high crimes against his people. Not only did the revolutionary tribunal find him guilty and order his death, but its masters then abolished monarchy itself and embarked on a bold (though short-lived) republican experiment. The event was a landmark in legal history. The trial and execution of King Charles marked a watershed in English politics and political theory and thus also affected subsequent developments in those parts of the world colonized by the British. This book presents a selection of contemporaries’ accounts of the king’s trial and their reactions to it, as well as a report of the trial of the king’s own judges once the wheel of fortune turned and monarchy was restored. It uses the words of people directly involved to offer insight into the causes and consequences of these momentous events.

Eyewitness accounts of the trial and execution of Charles I portray a revolutionary moment in English history

"This is a formidable and well-documented counterblast to a developing modern orthodoxy, expressing a point of view that many readers will not even have suspected existed, let alone read."--Anthony Daniels, Spectator "A useful and controversial contribution to the debate about victor's justice, and a valuable warning that international war crimes tribunals need to operate with precision and care."--Jonathan Steele, Guardian The rapid development of the use of international courts and tribunals to try heads of state for genocide and other crimes against humanity has been welcomed by most people, because they think that the establishment of international tribunals and courts to try notorious dictators represents a triumph of law over impunity. In A History of Political Trials, John Laughland takes a very different and controversial view, namely that political trials are inherently against the rule of law and almost always involve the abuse of process, as well as being seriously hypocritical. By means of detailed consideration of the trials of figures as disparate as Charles I, Louis XVI, Erich Honecker and Saddam Hussein, Laughland shows that the guilt of the accused has always been assumed in advance, that the judges are never impartial, that the process is always unfair and biased in favor of the prosecution, that the defense is not permitted to use all the arguments at its disposal, and that often the accusers have done exactly what they accuse the defence of having done. All the trials he recounts were marked by arbitrariness and injustice, often gross injustice. Although the chapters are short and easy to read, they are the fruit of formidable erudition and wide reading. The general reader will be forced by this book to re-examine the ideas on this subject, and will be much less sanguine about the possibility of bringing dictators and other leaders to genuine justice. John Laughland lives in Bath and is an author, journalist, and has been a university lecturer in France. He has published The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea (Time Warner Paperbacks) and has written for the Spectator, he Economist, and The New York Times . Table of Contents Introduction The Trial of Charles I and the Last Judgement The Trial of Louis XVI and the Terror War Guilt after World War I Defeat in the Dock: the Riom Trial Justice as Purge: Marshal Peacute;tain faces his Accusers Treachery on Trial: the Case of Vidkun Quisling Nuremberg : Making War Illegal Creating Legitimacy: the Trial of Marshal Antonescu Ethnic Cleansing and National Cleansing in Czechoslovakia, 19451947 Peoplers"s Justice in Liberated Hungary From Mass Execution to Amnesty and Pardon: Postwar Trials in Bulgaria, Finland, and Greece Politics as Conspiracy: the Tokyo Trials The Greek Colonels, the Emperor Bokassa, and the Argentine Generals: Transitional Justice, 19752007 Revolution Returns: the Trial of Nicolae Ceausescu A State on Trial: Erich Honecker in Moabit Jean Kambanda, Convicted without Trial Kosovo and the New World Order: the Trial of Slobodan Miloscaron;evic Regime Change and the Trial of Saddam Hussein Conclusion Notes Bibliography and Further Reading Index

The reign of Charles I, defined by religious conflict, a titanic power struggle with Parliament, and culminating in the English Civil Wars, the execution of the king, and the brief abolition of the monarchy, was one of the most turbulent in English history. Six years after the First Civil War began, and following Charles’ support for the failed Royalist uprising of the Second Civil War, an act of Parliament was passed that produced something unprecedented in the history of England: the trial of an English king on a capital charge. There followed ten extraordinary weeks that finally drew to a dark end on January 30, 1649, when Charles was beheaded in Whitehall. In this acclaimed account, C. V. Wedgwood recreates the dramatic events of the trial and Charles’s final days, to vividly bring to life the main actors in this tragic and compelling story

The events surrounding the trial of Charles I have been remarkably understudied by historians, despite a wealth of information regarding both the proceedings and personalities involved, and contemporary responses and reactions. These essays submit one of the most momentous events in English history to rigorous scholarship, contextualise it in the light of recent historiography, not least regarding relations between the three kingdoms of Britain.