The Execution of Charles I: Reasons for Regicide

Feb 1, 2012
Jennifer Young

Charles I was executed in 1649 - Image in the public domain

King Charles I was executed in 1649 and became a martyr. The republic (or Commonwealth) which followed his death was shortlived. Why did he have to die?

The execution of Charles I took place against a background of civil war which resulted from his intransigence in the face of Parliament and his belief in his own power as an anointed king (what the poet Alexander Pope was later to describe as ‘the Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong’). It can be argued that his death was an accidental outcome of the anti-monarchist campaign, rather than one of its objectives.

Revolution and Regicide

The United Kingdom has no tradition of successful revolution. The Peasants’ Revolt was easily overturned; when much of Europe was traumatised by the French Revolution the country remained largely untroubled; and the upheavals that saw the end of the European monarchies after the First World War left the British Isles still with a dynasty at the head of the ship of state.

But regicide – that’s different. You don’t have to look far to find that the killing of a ruling and anointed king is by no means uncommon, so much so that it must surely have been seen as a risk of the job. English history has seen the ruthless dispatch of kings who included William Rufus, Henry VI and Richard III, not to mention the villainous murders of the Princes in the Tower.

In Scotland it was as bad, if not worse. Even if Macbeth’s killing of King Duncan is historically unsound, the ruling Stuart dynasty spectacularly failed to blossom individually (though later succeeding to the thrones of England as well as Scotland). James I and III were murdered, James IV killed at Flodden and Mary Queen of Scots beheaded, after much prevarication, on the orders of Elizabeth I.

But these killings were not the same as the death of Charles I. These kings died in battle or in acts of treachery: their deaths were generally either very public murders or dark deeds committed in the dead of night with much debate about ‘whodunit’. They were killed not by anti-monarchists but by supporters of other claimants, and they were replaced by other kings or queens. Charles I was different: he died at the hands of ‘the people’.

The Trial and Execution of Charles I

Charles I had surrendered to the Scottish army (the Civil War was not only an English war) in 1646 and was handed over to English Parliamentary forces. The King probably did not expect that capture would end in death: after all, as Blair Worden notes, those who fought against him did so initially in the name of ‘King and Parliament’; and Parliament was voting to negotiate with him as late as December 1648 (Coward).

Yet, weeks later, everything changed. Parliament, surrounded by the Puritan forces under Henry Ireton, was purged of those MPs whose views were not in tune with those of Oliver Cromwell and his supporters. Those MPs who were left – the ‘Rump Parliament’- responded to Charles’ refusal to abdicate by ordering his trial. He was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to death. On 30 January 1649 he was beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

Why the King Had to Die

Cromwell seems to have had no fundamental objection to the monarchy. Not only was he prepared to negotiate with Charles for abdication in favour of his son Prince Henry, but he was content enough, it appears, to lie in state with the Crown at his head (although he refused it in his lifetime) and to try and establish his own (non-royal) dynasty.

Trevor Royle also suggests that Cromwell had hoped, until relatively late, to avoid the King’s death but his attitude hardened. Possibly it was Charles’ obstinate refusal to abdicate which made it politically impossible to replace him with one of his sons. Barry Coward suggests that it was the religious conviction of the New Model Army with their belief that Charles’ defeat was an indication that he had betrayed the will of God (and which, in the eyes of fanatical Puritans, could only deserve death).

Whatever the reason, this change of heart sealed the King’s fate. In the end the decision was not Cromwell’s per se, though he and his closest colleagues (most notably Ireton) can be argued to have masterminded it – but was effectively taken (as it had to be under the circumstances) by the Rump Parliament legislating for Charles’ indictment on what we might now call war crimes.

And once the decision was taken, Cromwell, Ireton and others were forceful in arguing for the King’s death – Royle even quotes one man who later regretted his signing of the Charles'death warrant (there were 62 of them) as claiming that Cromwell himself had forced him into signing it.

Execution and the People

The King’s execution might have been carried out in the name of the people, but it appears they had very little appetite for it. Blair Worden puts it bluntly, observing how even the majority of the antimonarchist forces were opposed to it. ’They knew it would destroy their cause’ – and indeed, it did.

Charles himself, ironically, did much to advance the monarchist cause by becoming a martyr for it. His death was not popular among his former subjects and, once sentenced, he behaved with courage and heroism. Following his precipitate execution the country effectively stumbled into a republic for which it wasn’t ready and for which it had no plans – and which was to last for little more than a decade.