Why was Charles I executed in January 1649?

Why was there a Second Civil War?

The King had refused to settle peacefully and become a constitutional monarch. He had played for time

Trying to settle with the King

The Presbyterians and many Independents now moved to settle with the King.

28th April 1648: The House of Commons had voted 165 to 99 not to alter ‘the fundamental Government of the Kingdom, by Kings, Lords and Commons’. In August 1648, Parliament revoked the Vote of No Addresses and began a new round of negotiations which would lead to the ‘Treaty of Newport’.

• These negotiations went on and on, and Parliament continued to try and settle with the King.

The aftermath of the Second Civil War

England was more politically divided than ever- a number who had fought as Royalists in the Second Civil War had actually fought for Parliament in the First Civil War.

The Independent party was in a state of collapse- the 2nd CW had been too much for it.

The Grandees

April 1648: during the three-day prayer meeting at Windsor Castle by the leadership of the NMA, the army leadership felt betrayed by the King because they fought that while they had been negotiating in good faith he had duplicitously gone behind their backs in making The Engagement with the Scots and encouraging a new CW.

• They also saw Charles actions as a rejection of Providence. At the end of the meeting they called Charles ‘that man of blood’.

The Army’s patience was running out

Hostility to Charles was particularly intense among those in the NMA. Many soldiers felt that they should not disband until there was a land fit for heroes to live in.

This stiffened their determination during the course of 1648 not to abandon the cause for which they had fought by trying to reach a settlement with the king.

6th Dec 1648: Pride’s Purge

Colonel Thomas Pride stationed troops at the entrance of the HoC and conducted what’s known as Pride’s Purge. He refused to allow into Parliament anyone who did not sympathise with the army’s cause. Parliament was reduced to only 150 members; it would be known as the Rump.

Cromwell turned up the next day.

The Rump moved against Charles

1st Jan 1649: the Rump, the remaining 150 members of Parliament, set up a high court of justice to try the king.

Expediency of proceedings

The king attended his trial in Westminster Hall, but refused to recognise the authority of the court- so was excluded from the proceedings after the third day.

• He was found guilty

• 29th Jan 1649: only 59 of the more than 150 members of the court could be prevailed upon to actually sign the King’s death warrant.

• The execution took place in Whitehall on the 30th of Jan 1649.

Reasons for regicide- Religious radicals

Millenarians regarded the final death of worldly kings, and thereby of all fleshly authority, as the necessary catalyst for the Second Coming of Christ.

Other Millenarians believed Charles had been guilty of sacrilege when he ignored God’s Providential message of victory by the parliamentary forces in 1646. He was guilty of murder in declaring war against his people of England.

Reasons for regicide- Republicans (political radicals)

There were also those who may or may not have believed that Charles was guilty of the charges brought against him, but that the bloodshed of the past seven years had been the consequence of investing a single person with potentially semi-divine powers.

Reasons for regicide-social conservatives

Charles had proven himself sinful by declaring war against his people, by breaking the reciprocal between government and governed and by ignoring victories against him, can be described as regicide.

• It was the desire to cut the cancerous individual away from a fundamentally sound body politic. If Charles was removed and replaced by one who could reunite the gravitas of the office with respect for the incumbent, England would return to peace and stability.