It came as a surprise to Gideon that when, back in London, he offered his services again to the Trained Bands’ Green Regiment, they failed to welcome him with rapture. ‘You can’t just turn up! We are not a dump for cast-off New Modellers.’
‘I am experienced.’
And infected with fantastical, wild ideas, no doubt. All our officers are Presbyterians now. We don’t have room for Baptists and Levellers and anti-monarchist firebrands with their bowels all on fire for giving potboys the vote.’
‘I can use a snaphance musket.’
‘Use it to shoot ducks then.’
‘Is Colonel Warner still in charge?’
‘No, he died in the summer’
While Gideon was away, his old colonel, Sir John Warner, had been elected Lord Mayor of London. His obituaries took up almost as much newsprint as those for Thomas Rainborough, and in the conservative press more. Warner had been Lord Mayor during a contentious period. His predecessor, Sir John Gayre, had colluded with the Royalist rebels in Kent — to the extent that he was indicted for high treason. However, Warner was a puritanical Independent, who would be remembered longest for having abolished the traditional satirical puppets at Bartholomew’s Fair. After he died, every puppeteer that August had a puppet playing Warner, making him a fool.
‘Here lies my lord Mayor, under this stone,
That last Bartholomew’s Fair, no puppets would own,
But next Bartholomew’s Fair, who liveth to see,
Shall view my lord Mayor, a puppet to be!’
Reforms that would give the puppets much more to squeak about were coming to a head, and Gideon would find work. By remaining in London he witnessed December’s and January’s astonishing events.
Only three weeks after Rainborough’s funeral, the move to bring the King to trial began. Up until then, peace negotiations had continued. Presbyterians, who still dominated Parliament, sent commissioners to the Isle of Wight, to speak to the King directly. He misinterpreted their eagerness to reach a settlement, which was really born out of deep fear of the radical republicans. The King took it for weakness, not grasping that even the Presbyterians now thought he was hopeless to deal with.
It was seven years since the war began, and one draft treaty after another had come to nothing. It was three and a half years since Naseby after which the New Model Army thought there should be no further argument. Now, Henry Ireton was put in charge of steering their proposals with an iron hand. On behalf of the army Ireton drew up a remonstrance which demanded abandoning negotiations, dissolving the Long Parliament which had been sitting for almost a decade, reforming the franchise and putting the King to trial on a charge of high treason.
This was unacceptable to Parliament. Parliament, as it was then constituted, therefore had to go. A secret committee — three MPs and three senior army officers — gathered in a private room. They looked at the members, name by name, marking those who ‘had continued faithfully to the public interest’. This meant specifically those who supported Ireton’s latest remonstrance.
Next day, Colonel Pride’s regiment appeared in Westminster and the rest, over 140 Members, were forcibly debarred from the House of Commons. Forty-one were taken prisoner and locked in an alehouse overnight — the alehouse adjoining Westminster Hall, which was ironically nicknamed ‘Hell’. The eldest were offered parole, with permission to sleep at their own homes, but they refused, because they would not recognise the authority by which they were apprehended.
After Pride’s Purge the tiny remainder came to be known derisively as the Rump Parliament (full of maggots’ jeered their enemies). These men put in hand the King’s trial. Few were dedicated republicans, in fact, but they distrusted Charles and were exasperated by years of failing to reach a compromise. Even those who believed in monarchy as a principle were now prepared to remove the current office-holder.
The New Model Army transferred the King from Carisbrooke to the nearby mainland, a grim prison at Hurst Castle, cut off on all sides by sea except for a narrow pebbled causeway. In that cold bastion, the trappings of sovereignty were stripped from him. He lived in a dark cell where candles were needed even in daylight. It was said that only one servant was allowed him, though the House of Commons formally approved a daily allowance of ten pounds for his maintenance — ten pounds, when an infantry soldier was paid only eight pence a day. Charles also had a specified list of servants that started with two personal attendants and ran into: a carver, a cupbearer, a sewer, a master of the robes, a page of the back stairs, a paymaster, servants of the wood-yard, of the cellar and buttery, of the pantry and ewry a page of the Presence, a groom of the chamber, a master cook and two undercooks. He was allowed to keep two pet dogs.
Those who had seen him reported that he was careless of dress and had let his hair grow long. It was all grey and his features had sunk, with pouchy eyes in a haggard face. At heart, he knew his fate. He spoke of it like a tragedian to any supporters who managed to visit him; he was gratified by their tears.
When the drastically reduced Parliament began setting up a High Court of Justice, the House of Lords refused to co-operate. The House of Commons pressed on, establishing the principle that the subjects of England had the right to pass judgment on their King: ‘the Commons of England in Parliament assembled do declare that the people are, under God, the original of all just power’. Directly opposite to the Stuarts’ belief in the Divine Right of Kings, this was the heart of why the civil war had been fought.
The trial was proclaimed by a sergeant at arms, who rode into Westminster Hall with the House of Commons mace upon his shoulder, attended by various officers and six trumpeters on horseback, while a guard of horse and foot beat up drums in New Palace Yard. The proclamation was made, then repeated later. Gideon heard it in Cheapside, Lambert at the Old Exchange. Orders were given for the practical management of the trial: provision of rooms and necessaries for the King, a house for the lord president of the court, the supply of guards for the court, for the King’s person, for all routes through which the King must pass, with extra guards on the roof and outside windows, security barriers to prevent crowd movements or rescue of the prisoner, even the blocking-up of tavern back doors which could give access to troublemakers.
No king of England had been tried for misdemeanours. There was no precedent; the very form of the court had to be worked out. Assassination, the tool of choice in previous history, was not to be allowed. There had to be a formal punishment for the kingdom’s bloodshed. Retribution must be seen to occur. And although English subjects had no bill of rights, those who were struggling towards reform wanted to demonstrate that they made themselves subjects by an implied contract, a contract where they had an expectation of good government from their monarchs.
Appointed to the court as judges were 135 commissioners. Many found themselves suddenly unavailable for this privilege. More than half refused to appear, either doubting the legality of proceedings or terrified of the danger. Lord Fairfax, whose political opinions had always been kept very strictly private, excused himself. Others believed it their duty to God and the country to take part. A little-known judge agreed to preside: John Bradshaw, who had begun his career as an attorney’s clerk at Congleton and progressed to Chief Justice of Chester; until then, he was unheard of outside Cheshire, which was viewed as a remote wilderness next to Wales. Even Bradshaw felt so petrified of being murdered for what he was doing, that he commissioned an armourplated hat, which he clapped on for the trial’s duration.
Now the King was brought closer to London, to Windsor Castle. He was in the custody of the Fifth-Monarchist Colonel Thomas Harrison, who had denounced him as ‘that Man of Blood’. On the 19th of January, Charles was shifted again, to St James’s Palace in Whitehall. Next morning, a Saturday, he was carried from St James’s in a heavily curtained sedan chair, and then taken half a mile by water, escorted by boatloads of musketeers. They delivered him to Sir Robert Cotton’s house, to await the opening of the first session of the trial. Cotton House had a superior position for a domestic building: right at the heart of the Parliamentary complex, between the Lobby and the Painted Hall.
Whenever the King was moved it happened discreetly, though people were aware of it. As always, a single cry of ‘God save the King!’ from a bystander would fill Charles with confidence, a bitter contrast, Parliamentarians thought, to his lack of reaction when hundreds of thousands of his subjects were so full of discontent they had been prepared to die fighting him. As he approached the trial, he seemed sure that his life was safe; he said that none of his enemies could possibly secure their interests unless they joined their fortunes to his.
He was not alone. Many people, in England and abroad, rejected any suggestion that the King might die. One practical reason was voiced: it would immediately pass his claim to the throne to his elder son, causing a new outbreak of war, with the advantage that the Prince of Wales would gain wide support as an object of pity, the innocent child of a martyr. Moreover, the army would be exchanging a King whose person they controlled for one who lay beyond their power abroad. The death of King Charles, it was presumed, would certainly not be the death of the monarchy.
Even the Levellers were divided. Richard Overton and the editors of The Moderate supported the trial. Overton had been campaigning openly against the monarchy; his 1647 pamphlet Regal Tyranny Discovered was the first to call for an execution. It had been roughly received by Parliament at the time: Anne Jukes told Gideon how Overton’s wife Mary had been arrested while she was stitching together copies of that pamphlet. They called her a whore, and dragged her very violently through the dirt to Maiden Lane Prison, with her six-month-old baby wailing at the breast — after which they hauled her away to the hell of Bridewell. The poor babe died in jail not long after …’
A month before the trial there was a meeting in Whitehall between the army Grandees, Levellers and City Independents to discuss implementing a constitution. Overton and Lilburne walked out. John Lilburne later complained that the army officers had only played with them to keep them quiet like little children with rattles. Always a maverick, Lilburne actually opposed the King’s trial on the basis that it was preferable to keep the monarchy as a balance against army tyranny.
From the moment of Pride’s Purge, many soldiers and former soldiers, Gideon Jukes among them, gave whole-hearted support — not least because the members who were barred from the House had been responsible for denying them their pay. The current army was present in force during the trial. Officers and soldiers who no longer had garrisons or regiments also converged on London to see through what they had fought for.
It was clear that what was about to happen would be unparalleled. In setting up the High Court of Justice, the sovereignty of the people had been declared, taking precedence over the monarchy. This was revolutionary, courageous, and bound to create high drama.
Westminster Hall was the chosen venue. This stately Gothic monument was more than seven hundred years old. For its first five hundred years it had been a royal residence, a place of feasting and entertainment. Once the largest hall in Europe to have an unsupported roof, its magnificent hammer-beam interior dated from the reign of King Richard the Second. The hall’s enormous size and spaciousness always made it ideal for ceremonious gatherings and in 1265 it had been the meeting place of the first true English Parliament, initiated by Simon de Montfort. Its existence had made Westminster the judicial and administrative centre of the kingdom. Various regular courts took place there: Common Pleas, Chancery, the Court of Wards, the King’s Bench. Previous important trials held there had been those of Sir Thomas More and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators — so there was an established tradition of manipulating justice at Westminster for political reasons. This was where the Earl of Strafford was tried, and nearly argued himself into acquittal.
Ironically, it was also the traditional venue for coronation banquets, including that of King Charles.
Robert Allibone and Gideon turned up like sightseers on Saturday the 20th of January, then attended every day. Lambert was on the mend, but still too shaky on his legs, though his wife Anne put on a hooded cloak and came. Gideon noticed with mild amusement that Anne was now so independent that she detached herself without a word and went to inveigle herself in among important ladies who were allowed to sit in the upper gallery. At first other spectators were kept standing out in New Palace Yard.
The judges entered and were seated. The commissioners’ names were called over and those who were present answered; there would never be any attempt to penalise those who absented themselves. In the gallery, Anne Jukes became a witness to an incident; when Lord Fairfax’s name was called, a masked woman cried out, ‘He has more wit than to be here!’ People whispered that it was his wife, Lady Fairfax.
Silence was called for, then the mighty doors at the end of the hall were hauled open so that all persons desirous to see or hear (without exception) might enter’. There were some exceptions: all delinquents and papists had been barred from within ten miles of London (though not those who were trying to pay their fines …). Otherwise it was a scrum.
‘Use your weight!’ muttered Robert as the crowd surged through the entrance, rushing for good vantage points.
‘Kick shins!’ urged Gideon. They pressed forwards ruthlessly and planted themselves among many others, all cloaked, gloved and hatted against the icy cold, a cold which even the presence of so many people never alleviated. Gideon, who had never been there before, gazed around in wonder at the spectacular great hall.
The public seats and standing room filled up fast. Silence was once more ordered. Colonel Tomlinson, in charge of the King, was commanded to bring in his prisoner. Although Cotton House was the nextdoor building, with royal dallying this took a quarter of an hour. Then came twenty officers with specially ordered partisans, twelve-foot staves with gleaming sharp barbed heads. The sergeant at arms, resplendent with his Mace, received the King into the court’s custody and conducted him straight to a crimson velvet chair. After a reproving glance around the court, the King took his place.
The judges refused to remove their hats to him. He refused to remove his hat to them.
All men are born equal!’ Robert Allibone snorted quietly.
Ever theatrical, the King had recovered his pride in his appearance. Maintaining a pose of great hauteur, he arrived in court in stunning black velvet, with the Order of the Garter resplendent on the left side of his cloak — a great, radiating circle of embroidered silver threads. This scintillating adornment, almost as long as his arm, was the oldest and highest English order of chivalry. It had been conceived to represent like-minded brotherhood — though a closed brotherhood of the sovereign with his elite private associates, not that of the sovereign and his subjects. The order’s patron was St George, the dragon-slaying patron saint of England, who was depicted on a dramatic medal which Charles wore on a wide blue ribbon around his neck.
As Gideon sourly surveyed that Garter, its archaic symbolism seemed a serious error, grounded in exclusiveness. Taught by the authors of radical pamphlets, Gideon viewed Honi Soi Qui Maly Pense as a mystic incantation in the language of the Normans, repressive foreign overlords who had seized power in England, then employed the barrier of ancient French to exclude the native population from government and the law. Chivalric this order might be, and comforting to the King, but for Gideon the black velvet and expensive embroidery were an attempt to shield the King, who lived so completely in this alien world, from the consequences of his own arrogance, deviousness, divisiveness, indifference, pettiness and vacillation, let alone (why be mealy-mouthed?) his misunderstanding of, distaste for and disloyalty to the common man.
Gideon felt the decorative trappings of monarchy had no relevance, not for any Parliamentary soldier who had marched until his feet were raw, his stomach gnawed by months of hunger, constantly tasting danger and terror amidst the smoke and din of battlefields where men were ripped apart, gouged open, shredded and knocked senseless. To those who had fought for Parliament, and to the women and children who shared their self-sacrifice, the charge that Charles Stuart had maintained a cruel war did matter; it mattered desperately.
Bradshaw, Lord President of the High Court of Justice, occupied a velvet throne, with a writing-desk before him. He was three steps up on a dais so spectators could see him. The King had his back to most of them; he was in a dock where the walls were so high that when he sat, only the crown of his hat was visible. From time to time he stood up and peered over at the audience disdainfully. Two clerks, the only people hatless, occupied a large square central table, covered with a deeply fringed turkey carpet in the traditional rich shades of red, black and green. They had to squeeze their pens and papers between the Mace and a ceremonial sword over which the Mace was crossed. Pikemen and musketeers lined all the seating areas. Since these heavily armed troops were standing, they had the best view. They were bitterly cold, and from time to time glumly stamped their booted feet. Their orders were to protect the court and its prisoner and to take into custody anyone who caused disturbances.
Bradshaw opened the unprecedented proceedings: ‘Charles Stuart, King of England, the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which is fixed upon you as the principal author of it, have resolved to make inquisition for blood. And according to that debt and duty they owe to justice, to God, the Kingdom and themselves, they have resolved to bring you to trial and judgment, and for that purpose have constituted this High Court of Justice before which you are brought.’
The clerk of the court was commanded to read the formal charge. ‘The Charge of the Commons of England against Charles Stuart, King of England, of High Treason and other high crimes.’ Gone now were the all-embracing lists of grievances that once featured in John Pym’s Grand Remonstrance. Ship Money, monopolies, encroachments, Catholic plots, Laudian impositions, imprisoned pamphleteers, abuses of commerce, disagreements about religion, were mopped up as a wicked design to uphold to himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will’ for which end the King had ‘traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the people therein represented’. Key military engagements were listed, from initial manoeuvres in 1642 and the raising of the King’s standard, through Edgehill, Reading, Gloucester, Newbury, Cropredy Bridge, Cornwall, Newbury again, Leicester, Naseby and the uprisings in Kent and elsewhere in 1648:
By which cruel and unnatural wars by him (the said Charles Stuart) levied, continued and renewed as aforesaid, much innocent blood of the free people of this nation hath been spilt, many families have been undone, the public treasury wasted and exhausted, trade obstructed and miserably decayed, vast expense and damage to the nation incurred, and many parts of the land spoiled, some of them even to desolation.
When he heard himself accused of tyranny, the King laughed loudly. His arrogance shocked the commissioners who had come to sit in judgment, and it shocked spectators.
John Cook, Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth, was to prosecute. As Cook began, the King rapped him on the shoulder with his heavy silver cane, attempting to interrupt. Eventually, the head of the cane tumbled off. It rolled on the floor, noisily travelling to and fro. The King waited for someone to pick it up for him. Nobody moved. He was forced to stoop and retrieve the finial himself. He looked shaken.
Undaunted, Cook continued. The King assumed an insouciant expression, unaware that his contemptuous manner was losing him sympathy. He demanded to know by what lawful authority he had been brought there. He directly accused the court of having no more legality than thieves and highway robbers, who got their way by force. Bradshaw at first floundered nervously saying that Charles was required to attend ‘in the name of the people, of which you are elected king — to which the King flashed back pedantically that England had not had an elected king in the past thousand years.
Bradshaw pressed on, repeatedly urging the King to give a plea, which he continually refused to do because he did not recognise the court. Finally Bradshaw gave up and adjourned proceedings. He ordered the soldiers to remove the prisoner.
Next day was Sunday. Bradshaw and the other commissioners sank themselves in prayer. Robert heard that Cromwell’s chaplain Hugh Peter preached them a sermon based on Psalm 149: To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron …
When the court resumed on the Monday, the pattern was set. The King again refused to acknowledge the court’s authority; the court doggedly insisted he must enter a plea, to no avail. Although dignified, the King’s obstinacy became so frustrating that one of the army commanders, Colonel Hewson, rushed forwards, crying ‘Justice!’ and spat in his face. Charles wiped away the spittle, remarking, ‘Well, sir, God has justice in store both for you and me.’
After three attempts, Bradshaw in exasperation ruled that the King’s refusal to plead was contumacy. This was formally defined in the court minutes by the clerks at the turkey carpet table as: ‘a standing mute, and tacit confession of the charge’.
What does that mean?’ whispered Gideon to Robert.
A silent confession. It theoretically removes any need to bring witnesses.’ Great care was taken to do so anyway. The record stated that the judges would have the witnesses examined, for their own satisfaction.
On the 24th of January, a subcommittee of the High Court, sitting in the Painted Chamber, examined thirty-three witnesses. Robert had discovered as much as possible about them. ‘They have been meticulously assembled from the length and breadth of the country, from Cornwall to Northumberland, and even brought from Ireland. Many have fought as Royalists. They include nine gentlemen, five husbandmen, a painter, a smith, a butcher, a maltster, a ferryman, a barber-surgeon, a g lover and a scrivener …’
The following day their depositions were read out in a public session. Gideon listened attentively. These witness statements would be much less famous than the angry exchanges between Charles and Bradshaw Nonetheless, they confirmed the King’s personal participation in battles, gave evidence of his close association with various atrocities — such as the tormenting of troops after Lostwithiel — and demonstrated his intention to stir up and continue war. The witnesses testified that they had seen the King on horseback in armour on battlefields; seventeen military actions, of various degrees, were mentioned by name:
This deponent saith that he did see the King at Edgehill in Warwickshire, where he (sitting on horseback while his army was drawn up before him) did speak to the colonel of every regiment that passed by him that he would have them speak to their soldiers to encourage them to stand it and to fight …And he did see many slain at the fight at Edgehill, and afterwards he did see a list brought in unto Oxford of the men which were slain in that fight, by which it was reported that there were slain 6,559 men.’
Next, written evidence was put on record: namely the papers that had been taken from the King’s cabinet after the battle of Naseby. In them he demonstrated his deviousness, his willingness to play off opponents against one another — and most damningly, his negotiations to bring in foreign armies to assist him against his subjects.
For the next two days, the commissioners sat in private. They came to their verdict and drafted the sentence. It condemned Charles Stuart as a ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the Commonwealth of England’. However, the King was still given one final chance to accept the jurisdiction of the court, and thus to have his defence heard. Some of the judges may have believed that the terror of death would at last induce him to compromise. Charles certainly did now retract his original position — but only so far as to offer to co-operate with a trial if it were held as a conference’, jointly with the Houses of Lords and Commons.
Even at this stage the request was considered. Once more the King was removed while the court went into recess. Outside, Gideon Jukes and Robert Allibone paced about New Palace Yard, with Robert fuming, ‘He has turned on his tail like a landed fish. This is just more prevarication!’
‘By considering the proposal, they show they are fair-minded,’ Gideon tried to pacify him. ‘They will not agree it, yet they must be seen to consider all possibilities.’
The King’s request was refused.
The trial ended on Saturday. The King was brought to court to hear the sentence. Lord President Bradshaw began his summing-up: ‘Gentlemen, the Prisoner at the Bar hath been several times brought before the court to make answer to a charge of high treason in the name of the people of England …’
He was interrupted. From the same masked lady in the gallery came another shout: ‘No! Not half nor a quarter of the people of England -Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!’
Colonel Axtell ordered his men to level their muskets at the gallery and cried, ‘Down with the whore!’
The soldiers turned and aimed their guns. Women froze in their seats. There was, reported Anne Jukes afterwards, a terrible moment of stillness, until the soldiers refused to fire. The masked heckler, again thought to be Anne, Lady Fairfax, was hustled away by her friends.
Bradshaw now gave an address which lasted forty minutes. In it he stated that even a king was subject to the law, and that law originated with Parliament. Charles Stuart had broken the sacred bond between king and subject. By making war on his own people, he forfeited his right to their allegiance. ‘There is a contract and a bargain made between a king and his people, and certainly the bond is reciprocal… Sir, if this bond be once broken, farewell sovereignty. Whether you have been -as by your office you ought to be — a Protector of England, or a Destroyer of England, let all England judge.’
Declaring Charles guilty of the charges against him, Bradshaw then ordered the sentence to be read out.
‘Charles Stuart, as tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the good people of this nation shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body’
To his great dismay, Charles was not allowed to speak. Much was made of that by his supporters afterwards, but it was traditional. From the pronouncement of a death sentence a convicted man was legally dead.
Still protesting hopelessly, the prisoner was bustled away by soldiers with lighted matchcord, who contemptuously blew smoke in his face. Though it was said that Colonel Axtell beat them to make them do it, many of them shouted jubilantly, ‘Justice!’ and ‘Execution!’