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THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF CHARLES I*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2010

CLIVE HOLMES
CLIVE HOLMES
Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
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Abstract

This article challenges the recent interpretation of the trial of Charles I which sees it as an ‘extended negotiation’, an attempt to achieve a settlement with the king, and depicts the execution as the by-product, contingent and reluctantly undertaken, of the failure of that attempt. This argument was developed by Dr Sean Kelsey in a number of articles, not least one in this journal, and has been embodied in recently published general works on the period. I argue that this revisionist account of on-going negotiation with Charles I up to and during the trial is defective. It relies on an uncritical approach to the evidence, particularly that distilled from newspaper accounts. It misunderstands the significance of several key texts, notably the army's November Remonstrance, the Act establishing the High Court of Justice, and the charge against the king. Finally, it emphasizes a unity of purpose among conservative judges eager to do a deal with Charles, and fails to comprehend the force of the army's and Cromwell's insistence on public justice upon ‘this man against whom the Lord hath witnessed’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 289 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Eikon basilike: the povrtraictvre of his sacred majestie in his solitude and sufferings (1st edn, 1648), pp. 252–3.

2 A declaration of the English army now in Scotland (1650), p. [12].

3 S. R. Gardiner, History of the great civil war, 1642–1649 (4 vols., London, 1893), iv, p. 287 (and see ch. 69 passim). David Underdown, Pride's Purge (Oxford, 1971), pp. 166–72, supplements Gardiner's account. J. S. Adamson, ‘The frighted junto: perceptions of Ireland and the last attempts at settlement with Charles I’, in Jason Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 57–61.

4 In order of publication, the key works are ‘Staging the trial of Charles I’, in Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I, pp. 71–93; ‘The death of Charles I’, Historical Journal, 45, (2002), pp. 727–54; ‘The trial of Charles I’, English Historical Review, 118, (2003), pp. 583–616; ‘The Ordinance for the trial of Charles I’, Historical Research, 76, (2003), pp. 310–31; ‘Politics and procedure in the trial of Charles I’, Law and History Review, 22, (2004), pp. 1–26. Additional discussion by Kelsey can be found in ‘“A no-king, or a new”: royalists and the succession, 1648–1649’, in J. McElligott and D. L. Smith, eds., Royalists and royalism during the English civil wars (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 192–213; idem, ‘The king's book: Eikon basilike and the English Revolution of 1649’, in N. Tyacke, ed., The English Revolution, c. 1590–1720: politics, religion and communities (Manchester, 2007), pp. 150–68.

5 In 2001 Charles is said to have treated his trial ‘as an elaborate negotiation’ (Kelsey, ‘Staging’, p. 72); by 2002 the trial itself is presented objectively in these terms ‘an elaborate form of public negotiation’ (Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 743).

6 Richard Cust, Charles I: a political life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 448–65, quotation at p. 459; Michael Braddick, God's fury, England's fire: a new history of the English civil wars (London, 2008), ch. 20, quotation at p. 564.

7 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 728.

8 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 8.

9 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 586, 592.

10 Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 744–5.

11 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 4.

12 J. S. Adamson, ‘Frighted junto’, pp. 60–1.

13 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 593; idem, ‘Death’, p. 732.

14 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 600.

15 Marchamont Nedham's favoured description; see Adamson, ‘Frighted junto’, pp. 47, 66 n. 45.

16 Gardiner, Great civil war, iv, p. 287 (and see ch. 69 passim); Underdown, Pride's Purge, pp. 171, 172.

17 Adamson, ‘Frighted junto’, p. 59.

18 The alliance was signed on 17 Jan.; news of this had reached Westminster by the 24th: Adamson, ‘Frighted junto’, p. 61.

19 Ibid., pp. 43–5.

20 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 732.

21 The maverick Major Francis White wrote to Fairfax on 22 Jan. a letter, subsequently published as a pamphlet, questioning the king's trial. His tortuous argument largely concerned the legal authority under which the court acted. But he concluded pragmatically: Charles I is ‘under your power’; Charles II ‘will be able to do you more mischief because he is at liberty’. Gardiner, Great civil war, iv, pp. 301–3, quotes extensively from this letter.

22 Oxford, Bodleian Library (Bod. L.), MS Eng. C.6075: Dr Kelsey believes this commentary on affairs is by a soldier – an anonymous soldier in 2001, who transmutes into a ‘member of the Council of Officers’ by 2004: ‘Staging’, p. 88 n. 14; ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 6. It was, I think, from internal evidence, written by an ex-soldier and current MP. The Bodleian Library purchased the letter with a collection of papers of Sir Francis Russell of Chippenham, and although there is no clear identification, Russell, ex-colonel in the army of the Eastern Association and recruiter MP for Cambridgeshire, answers the description we can create from a careful reading of the paper.

23 A favoured phrase of Nedham's: see Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648) sig. [Eee2], no. 40/1 (a double issue: 26 Dec. 1648–9 Jan. 1649), sig. [Fffv].

24 My account relies on Nedham's eight newsletters, copied and forwarded to Edward Nicholas by John Lawrans (Bod. L., MS Clarendon, 34, fos. 7v–8v, 12, 12–13v; 17–17v, 17v–18, 72, 72v, 88–88v), and on Mercurius Pragmaticus, nos. 36/7 (a double issue: 5–12 Dec. 1648), 38 (12–19 Dec. 1648), 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648), 40/1 (26 Dec. 1648–9 Jan. 1649). Jason Peacey's brilliant ‘Marchamont Nedham and the Lawrans letters’ (Bodleian Library Record (2000), pp. 24–35) is essential reading both on the question of Nedham's authorship of these letters, and on the overlap of their themes with arguments presented in Mercurius Pragmaticus.

25 Quotations from Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648), sig. [Eee4v]; Bod. L., Clarendon MS, 34 fo. 18; Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 40/1 (26 Dec. 1648–9 Jan. 1649), sig. [Fffv].

26 Newsletter of 4 Dec. 1648, Bod. L., MS Clarendon 34, fo. 8v; Jason Peacey, Politicians and pamphleteers: propaganda during the English civil wars and interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), p. 258.

27 Jason McElligott has surveyed the current of adulation with a jaundiced eye in his Royalism, print and censorship in revolutionary England (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 118–20.

28 Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 36/7 (5–12 Dec. 1648), sig. [Ccc 4v]; no. 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648), sig [Eeev].

29 Bod. L., MS Clarendon 34, fos. 8v, 18v.

30 Pauw's report, with a covering note to the Doge and Senate from Contarini, Calendar of state papers relating to English affairs in the archives of Venice (38 vols., London, 1864–1947), xxviii (1647–1652), pp. 90–1. John Dillingham's Dublin correspondent was not fazed by the threats to the regime from within Ireland – the enemy, he reported in a letter of 6 Jan., are ‘impotent or cowardly’: The Moderate Intelligencer, 200 (11–18 Jan. 1649), sig. (Qqqqqqqqqqv).

31 Adamson acknowledges that Nedham's account of the Rump's predicament, at least in relation to the threat from Ireland, was overstated: fears were ‘responses to shadows rather than realities’ (‘Frighted junto’, pp. 47–9). Kelsey, in his most recent contribution, ‘“A no-king or a new”’, pp. 207–8, also recognizes the point.

32 Bod. L., MS Clarendon 34, fos. 17, 18.

33 Webb to Lord Craven, 12 Jan. 1649, London, British Library (BL), Add. MS 63743, fo. 1v.

34 Kelsey, ‘“A no-king or a new”’, p. 203.

35 Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 736, 742, 747.

36 He writes of the terms ‘purportedly’ offered the king by Denbigh (‘Politics and procedure’, p. 2) though their reality is assumed later in the same essay (pp. 7–8).

37 Adamson, ‘Frighted junto’, pp. 45–7.

38 Compare, Kelsey, ‘“A no-king or a new”’, p. 204, with Mercurius Elencthicus, 57 (19–26 Dec. 1648), p. [547].

39 John Morrill and Philip Baker, ‘Oliver Cromwell, the regicide and the sons of Zeruiah’, in Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I, p. 30.

40 For this paper's history, see McElligott, Royalism, print and censorship, pp. 108–10, 162–3.

41 Mercurius Melancholicus, 1 (25 Dec. 1648–1 Jan. 1649): the section concerning the army council was reproduced in The Clarke papers, ii, ed. C. H. Firth (Camden New Series, vol. 54, London, 1894), p. xxx. The six to one proportion, which has now become a fixture of scholarly discussion (Andrew Hopper, ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution (Manchester, 2007), p. 100; David Farr, Henry Ireton and the English Revolution (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 184), appears to be a calculation based on comparing the small group who favoured Ireton's proposal with the number of officers present at the council on 26 Dec.; there is no attendance list for the Christmas Day meeting.

42 Morrill and Baker prefer, without explanation, a date of 27 Dec., ‘Sons of Zeruiah’, p. 31.

43 Transcripts of letters from de Grignon to Mazarin and to Brienne, London, The National Archives (TNA), PRO 31/3/89: letters of 4 Jan. 1649, n.s (fos. 58–9), 7 Jan. 1649, n.s. ( fos. 62–3). For Cromwell's ‘artifice’, see the letter of 31 Dec. 1648, n.s. (fo. 52).

44 Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 740-1.

45 Bod. L., MS Clarendon 34, fo. 72: Kelsey's fullest account of this incident is in ‘Death’, pp. 740–1. For a very different account, that I find more compelling, see David Smith, Constitutional royalism and the search for a settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 140–1.

46 De Grignon to Brienne, 21 Jan. 1649, n.s., TNA, PRO 31/3/89, fo. 77v.

47 For instance, that ‘Cromwell and the grandees’, troubled by Scots and Dutch representations, were preparing ‘to play the other game’ and spare the king on 26 Jan. Peacey, ‘Marchamont Nedham’, p. 31, transcribes this passage.

48 The Moderate, 27 (9–16 Jan. 1649), p. [259].

49 The Moderate Intelligencer, 200 (11–18 Jan. 1649), sig. (Qqqqqqqqqv); Perfect occurrences of every daies iournall in parliament, 107 (12–19 Jan.), p. 802. For Kelsey's reading of this, see ‘Death’, pp. 742–3.

50 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 728.

51 Ibid., p. 740.

52 Ibid., p. 747; Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 599, 600; idem, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 19.

53 A declaration of the Commons … expressing their reasons and grounds of passing the late resolutions touching no farther address or application to be made to the kin (15 Feb. 1647/8) pp. 12–17.

54 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 599; idem, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 15.

55 It is a phrase used in introduction of the contention in both Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 599 and idem, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 15.

56 An exact and impartial accompt of the indictment, arraignment, trial and judgment (according to law) of nine and twenty regicides (1660), p. 44.

57 Ibid., p. 119.

58 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, pp. 16–17.

59 A point made effectively by Geoffrey Robertson, The tyrannicide brief: the story of the man who sent Charles I to the scaffold (London, 2005), p. 392 n. 16.

60 John Cook, King Charls his case: or an appeal to all rational men concerning his trial at the High Court of Justice (1649), p. 11.

61 The lawyer–MP, Nicholas Love's reported comment is, unsurprisingly, a favoured mantra for Kelsey (‘Staging’, p. 76; ‘Death’, p. 734; ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 13).

62 Journals of the House of Commons (CJ), vi (1648–51), pp. 104, 105, 106, 107. Kelsey, in ‘Ordinance’, a nice piece of detective work, sets out the legislative process, and draws attention to the differences – mostly in the list of commissioners – between the original Ordinance and the eventual Act.

63 CJ, vi, p. 107. When this resolution was issued on the sole authority of the Commons on 3 Jan. the language was changed slightly: it was declared to be ‘High Treason’ for the king to levy war against the ‘Parliament or Kingdom’. CJ, vi, p. 110.

64 J. G. Muddiman, The trial of King Charles the First (Edinburgh, 1928), p. 193 (transcribed from the journal of the proceedings of the commissioners).

65 John Rushworth, Historical collections of private passages of state (8 vols., 1659–1701), vii, pp. 1376, 1378, 1380.

66 Rushworth, Historical collections, vii, p. 1380; Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English affairs (4 vols., Oxford, 1853), ii, p. 487.

67 Journals of the House of Lords (LJ), x (1648–9), p. 642.

68 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 3.

69 Muddiman, Trial, pp. 214–22.

70 D. Alan Orr, ‘The juristic foundation of regicide’, in Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I, pp. 117–33, esp. pp. 118, 125, 127–8.

71 Braddick, God's fury, England's fire, p. 571.

72 Cust, Charles I, p. 453.

73 Gardiner, Great civil war, iv, pp. 31, 36, 214.

74 Anonymous letter from the Isle of Wight, to ‘My Lord’, reprinted in Mercurius Pragmaticus, 27 (26 Sept. – 3 Oct. 1648), sig. [Nnv].

75 Reasons and grounds of his majesties answere to the first proposition (1648): Thomason dates this work as 11 Dec. 1648.

76 Rushworth, Historical collections, vii, p. 1290 (and see p. 1270); The true copy of a petition promoted in the army (1648), p. 4; The Moderate, 14 (10–17 Oct. 1648), sig. [Ov]. This issue is well examined in Kelsey's ‘“A no-king or a new”’, pp. 194, 197–8, 201, but he fails to relate the implication of his discussion to the issue of the charge.

77 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 728.

78 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 593.

79 Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC), 7th Report (London, 1879), pp. 129 (petition of William Heveningham, 1660), 150 (petition of William, Lord Monson, 1661).

80 Bod. L., MS Clarendon 34, fo. 17. Whitelocke, Memorials, ii, pp. 484–5.

81 Hopper, ‘Black Tom’, p. 102.

82 R. W. Blencowe, ed., Sydney papers (London, 1825), pp. 54 (earl of Leicester's Journal), 237 (Algernon Sidney to his father, the earl of Leicester, 12 Oct. 1660).

83 HMC, 7th Report, p. 121: 1660, petition of Thomas Lister. Lister did not attend the court again after the first public session of 20 Jan.

84 McIntosh, A. W. (‘The number of the English regicides’, History, 67, (1982), pp. 195–216Google Scholar) is suspicious of some of these self-serving claims, and rightly points out the inconsistencies in the ‘abject recantation’ (p. 213) being retailed in the circumstances of the Restoration trials: I am less generally sceptical, but the key point is that none of those so desperately begging for mercy claimed to be part of a co-ordinated effort to save the king.

85 HMC, 7th Report, petitions of Lord Monson (p. 150), Sir Henry Mildmay (p. 150), Robert Wallop (p. 151).

86 For Downes, see n. 88 below: for Heveningham, Love, and Waite see their petitions to parliament in HMC, 7th Report – Love, p. 119; Heveningham, pp. 86, 125, 129, 158; Waite, pp. 156–7. For Harvey, compare BL, Add. MS 37344, fo. 251 – Whitelocke's account of 29 Jan., omitted from the printed Memorials – with Exact and impartial accompt, p. 142. The circumstance that led Bradshaw to adjourn the court and the discussion that followed is nicely described in C. V. Wedgwood, The trial of Charles I (London, 2001), pp. 135–8.

87 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 23.

88 For Downes, see A true and humble representation of Iohn Downes Esq (1660); Exact and impartial accompt, pp. 259–61; HMC, 7th Report, pp. 158–9, affidavits supporting Downes's petition to parliament.

89 De Grignon to Mazarin and to Brienne, 21 Dec. 1648, n.s., TNA, PRO 31/3/89 fo. 40v.

90 Morrill and Baker, ‘Sons of Zeruiah’, p. 29. So Ian Gentles sees the Remonstrance, ‘the masterplan for the army's actions’, as categorically committed to the king's condemnation: The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 274, 276.

91 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 730.

92 Kelsey, ‘Ordinance’, p. 313 and n. 13.

93 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 5 n. 13.

94 A Remonstrance of his excellency Thomas Lord Fairfax … and of the generall councell of officers held at St Albans the 16 of November, 1648 (1648), pp. 61, 62.

95 Ibid., pp. 18, 25.

96 Ibid., pp. 19, 47–8.

97 Ibid., pp. 21–4: this is a particularly opaque passage, and others have misunderstood it – see Gentles, New Model Army, 275. David Farr's gloss on this passage emulates Ireton in its tortured prose – but his conclusion, that the authors of the Remonstrance were convinced of the king's guilt and believed he should be executed, is surely right: Farr, Henry Ireton, pp. 145–50. Glenn Burgess also argues that the Remonstrance made it ‘clear’ that the ‘king was to be brought to justice’ British Political Thought, 1500–1660 (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 260–3.

98 Burgoyne to Sir Ralph Verney, 20 Nov. 1648, BL Film 636 (Claydon House Letters), reel 9.

99 Oxford, Worcester College, Clarke MS 16, fos. 16, 19v.

100 The Moderate Intelligencer, no. 197 (21–8 Dec. 1648), sig. (Nnnnnnnnn).

101 Rushworth, Historical collections, vii: petitions from Devon (pp. 1390–1), from the Isle of Wight and south coast garrison towns (p. 1394), from North Wales (p. 1395).

102 Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure’, p. 5 n. 13.

103 The Moderate Intelligencer, 192 (16–23 Nov. 1648), sig. (Hhhhhhhhh2v); Perfect occurrences of every daies iournall in parliament, 99 (17–24 Nov. 1648), p. 737; Packets of letters from severall parts, 36 (21 Nov. 1648), p. 2.

104 The articles and charge of the army exhibited in parliament against the king's majesty (1648), pp. 2–3, first pagination. Thomason acquired this work on 22 Nov.

105 An abridgement of the late remonstrance of the army (1648), title page: the work was signed by Rushworth, as had been the Remonstrance, but it does not use exactly the same formula. The publisher, Lawrence Blaiklocke, besides fronting the long-running weekly newspaper, A perfect diurnall of some passages in parliament, had a small business in ‘official’ publications: most recently, he had been employed by the army to disseminate The lord general's letter (1 Dec. 1648) demanding the immediate payment of £40,000 by the City of London. The Abridgement has, I think, an army provenance, but may not have had the approval of the general council that it claimed.

106 Abridgement, the marginal glosses on pp. 8, 10.

107 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 731 n. 15.

108 Martin Dzelzainis, in his ‘Anti-monarchism in English republicanism’, in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: a shared European heritage (2 vols., Cambridge, 2002), i, pp. 27–41. Dzelzainis attributes the Abridgement, on which he provides a useful commentary, to Peter on the strength of a suggestion made to him by Austin Woolrych (p. 34 n. 9).

109 Kelsey, ‘Death’, p. 747.

110 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 608; idem, ‘Death’, p. 745.

111 Mercurius Pragmaticus, 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648), sig. [Eee 4]; Exact and impartial accompt, pp. 165–6.

112 Ibid., p. 167: the witness, Chase, reported that the ‘bind their kings’ phrase was ‘part of his text’, and that Peter commented on the entire psalm, with its succession of injunctions to ‘praise ye the Lord’.

113 Ibid., pp. 167, 168 – testimony of Mr Chase, and of Thomas Tongue.

114 The Moderate, 28 (16–23 Jan. 1648), p. [271].

115 Exact and impartial accompt, p. 167 – testimony of Thomas Tongue.

116 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, p. 593.

117 Fleetwood played no public role after the conclusion of the second civil war; he returned to the Commons only in May 1649. Sir Charles Firth and Godfrey Davies, The regimental history of Cromwell's army (2 vols., Oxford, 1940), i, pp. 94–6; Underdown, Pride's Purge, pp. 373, [391].

118 I believe, against Kelsey in his ‘Ordinance’, that the lists of commissioners that circulate in the press in the first week of Jan. 1649, and which are significantly different from the names in the Ordinance rejected by the Lords on 2 Jan., are from an official source, not merely ‘a mixture of “selective briefing” and more or less inspired guesswork’ (p. 315). A version of the original document had been received in the north well before the newsbooks – the first, published on 2 Jan., could not have arrived by 6 Jan., when Thomas Margetts uses the document's language of the commissioners forming a ‘jury’ and complains – ‘a little disobligement’ – of the absence of representatives from the northern brigade (BL, Add. MS 21417, fo. 24). Some of the latter were incorporated in the Ordinance (and carried forward into the subsequent Act). If the document has some official provenance (and the point is disputable), then the alterations to the list of officers between it and the Ordinance is significant: four colonels were struck from the list (Edward Cook, Robert Saunders, Philip Twisleton, Nathaniel Rich – the last of whom had expressed some diffidence concerning the direction of events in the council of the army on 29 Dec.) (see Clarke papers, ed. Firth, ii, p. 153; Kelsey, ‘Ordinance’, pp. 318–20); they were replaced by Lieutenant-General Hammond, Major-General Lambert, Cols. Lilburne and Overton, and Lieutenant-Colonel Goffe.

119 Not all the military commissioners who failed to attend the trial were necessarily hostile to the direction of policy: Desborough, Lambert, and Overton had important posts in the localities that kept them in, respectively, Yarmouth, Pontefract, and Hull.

120 See above, n. 21. It is significant that White's letter to Fairfax was only published two months after it was written: Francis White, The copies of severall letters contrary to the opinions of the present powers (1649), pp. 1, 4.

121 Clarke papers, ed. Firth, ii, pp. 181–3.

122 Ibid., ii, pp. 183–6.

123 This was an issue that troubled the army council. On 29 Dec. the officers solemnly asked Elizabeth Poole, the Abingdon prophetess who had been brought before them, how they could answer the ‘aspertions’ of those who argued that they were wholly motivated by ‘our own ends’ (Elizabeth Poole, A vision, wherein is manifested the disease and care of the kingdome (9 Jan. 1649), p. 2).

124 The letters to his colleagues in London from the radical administrator of the northern army, Thomas Margetts, who was deeply fearful that the army council would ‘fall off’ and do a deal with the king, are the best example of this (Clarke papers, ed. Firth, ii, p. 70 (letter of 13 Dec.); Oxford, Worcester College, Clarke MS 114, fo. 178, letter of 30 Dec.), but similar fears were, if more obliquely expressed in radical journals, like The Moderate: see above, n. 48.

125 De Grignon to Mazarin, 31 Dec. 1648 n.s., TNA, PRO 31/3/89, fo. 52.

126 Morrill and Baker, ‘Sons of Zeruiah’, particularly pp. 24–32: they cite Cromwell's Preston letter to the Commons – ‘they that are implacable and will not leave troubling the land may speedily be destroyed out of the land’; and the devastating retort to Hammond, when he suggested that some good might come from negotiation with Charles: ‘good! From this man against whom the lord hath witnessed’ (pp. 26, 29).

127 Whitelocke, Memorials, ii, pp. 478–81; Ruth Spalding, ed., The diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 226–7.

128 Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 297–8.

129 A serious and faithfull representation of the judgements of the ministers of the gospell within the province of London (17 Jan. 1649), pp. 2–3.

130 Underdown, Pride's Purge, chs. 5 and 6.

131 Clarke papers, ed. Firth, ii, p. 132: it may be significant that the seven members of the committee were not heavy hitters in the council.

132 Whitelocke, Memorials, ii, p. 480.

133 There are at least five such documents: (1) The resolution of his excellency the Lord General (14 Dec. 1648) – a spoof, in which the ‘dangerous Articles of Impeachment against the King’ are taken from the works of William Prynne; (2) Heads of the charge against the king, drawn up by the generall councell of the armie (24 Dec. 1648) – Gentles, followed by David Farr, has argued that this is ‘an Ireton document’: its appearance and publication history do not suggest that it has any official provenance, and it is largely a cut-and-paste job from the Remonstrance (Gentles, New Model Army, p. 300; Farr, Henry Ireton, pp. 185–6). There were two further ‘Army’ charges published on 29 Dec.; (3) The charge of the army and counsel of war; and (4) Articles exhibited against the king, both published on 29 Dec. The last of these spurious productions appears on 4 Jan., The manner of the deposition of Charles Stewart, p. 2.

134 Clarke papers, ed. Firth, ii, pp. 144–7; Whitelocke, Memorials, ii, p. 485.

135 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 594–7, befogs the issue by a complex discussion of the proclamation of the court's time and place of its first public meeting – formally announced as in the Painted Chamber. As busy men – MPs, officers, city officials – their preliminary meetings were bound to be held at Westminster. The actual venue of the trial was another matter, and, as Kelsey demonstrates from newsbook accounts, still thought to be an issue. The initial decision did not preclude, under the terms of the legislation, the opportunity to adjourn the court to another location.

136 Muddiman, Trial, pp. 199–201.

137 The Moderate Intelligencer, 200 (11–18 Jan. 1648), p. [1838]. Dillingham writes this as an account of a full meeting of the commissioners. But his date, 11 Jan., and the nature of the issue suggest a report of the sub-committee's deliberations.

138 Perfect occurrences of every daie iournall in parliament, 107 (12–19 Jan. 1649), p. 802.

139 CJ, vi, pp. 119, 121, 122; LJ, x, p. 646; Perfect occurrences of every daie iournall in parliament, 107 (12–19 Jan. 1649), pp. 802–3, 804; A perfect diurnall of some passages in parliament, 288 (15–22 Jan.), p. 2302.

140 The Moderate, 30, p. [293], petition from Worcestershire, received 25 Jan.; Rushworth, Historical collections, vii, p. 1395, petition from North Wales, received 19 Jan. And see David Scott's telling analysis of the petitions from the northern counties: ‘Motives for king-killing’, in Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I, pp. 148–50.

141 Jason Peacey, ‘Reporting a revolution: a failed propaganda campaign’, in Peacey, ed., The regicides and the execution of Charles I, pp. 161–80, at p. 162.

142 Kelsey, ‘Death’, pp. 744, 747.

143 Muddiman, Trial, p. 213.

144 Kelsey, ‘Trial’, pp. 586, 592.

145 Downes, True and humble representation.