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.

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

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

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.

Examines the lives of the men who signed Charles I's death warrant and the far-reaching consequences for them, those present at the trial, and England itself.

When Charles I was executed, his son Charles II made it his role to search out retribution, producing the biggest manhunt Britain had ever seen, one that would span Europe and America and would last for thirty years. Men who had once been among the most powerful figures in England ended up on the scaffold, on the run, or in fear of the assassin's bullet. History has painted the regicides and their supporters as fanatical Puritans, but among them were remarkable men, including John Milton and Oliver Cromwell. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh bring these remarkable figures and this astonishing story vividly to life an engrossing, bloody tale of plots, spies, betrayal, fear and ambition.