The King's Revenge (52 page)

The exhumed head of Oliver Cromwell was displayed on a spike for Londoners to gape at. Pennant’s London

John Barkstead, Miles Corbet and John Okey, the fugitive regicides, who were kidnapped by Downing and dispatched to London
to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Cromwell Museum

The posthumous ‘execution’ of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton. Their heads can be seen on the roof of the
Banqueting House. Private collection/Bridgeman Art Library

This contemporary woodcut depicts the butchering of three of the regicides: John Jones, Gregory Clement and Adrian Scroop.
A horse-drawn sledge brings two other condemned men to the gallows. British Museum

Edmund Ludlow, the republican general, blamed by royalists for every plot against Charles II.
MEPL

When parliamentary grandee John Lisle fled abroad, he unwittingly placed himself in the sights of a royalist assassination
squad.
NPG

The brutal spectre of hanging, drawing and quartering became counterproductive thanks to the powerful speeches by the leading
regicides on reaching the scaffold.
MEPL

The story of the Angel of Hadley became an American legend. The angel was widely thought to be the regicide general William
Goffe, who escaped to America. Peter Newark American Pictures/Bridgeman Art Library

The political theorist Algernon Sidney was at first opposed to Charles I’s treason trial but later changed his mind. He spent
his later years in exile, pursued by royalist assassination squads across Europe. Authors’ collection

Aphra Behn, famous as a novelist and dramatist, was also a royalist spy. She successfully inveigled a former lover into becoming
a double agent for the royalist cause.
NPG

*
For a full list of the regicides see Appendix 1.

*
A radical movement that wanted sweeping electoral and constitutional reform along with equal rights for all men.

*
There is some controversy over the intentions behind the decision to put the king on trial. Sean Kelsey has argued (in
The Historical Journal
, vol. 45, 2002, and the
Law and History Review
, vol. 22, 2994, and elsewhere), that ‘the king’s trial was contrived as a final bid for peaceful settlement and not as a
prelude to king-killing’. This view is strongly refuted by Clive Holmes (The
Historical Journal
, vol. 53, 2010), who says of Kelsey’s argument: ‘It relies on an uncritical approach to the evidence’ and ‘misunderstands
the significance of … the army’s November Remonstrance, the act of establishing the High Court of Justice, and the charge
against the king’. We tend to side with Holmes’ interpretation of the purpose of the trial as being to bring to public justice
‘this man against whom the Lord hath witnessed’, as Cromwell had it.

*
Fifth Monarchists believed that there were five historical periods, each ruled by a monarch. The fifth, or last, of these
would be the reign of Christ. Hence, Charles I was the fourth and stood in the way.

*
In 1646, Bradshaw and Cook persuaded the House of Lords to overturn the 1638 Star Chamber judgment against John Lilburne.
In doing so, they argued that a defendant should not be put in the position of incriminating himself by signing an oath to
answer all questions truthfully before knowing what charges had been levied against him. In time, this right to silence expanded
to cover all charges of a criminal nature. However, since 1994 juries have been allowed to draw inferences from a defendant’s
refusal to answer questions

*
Henry Marten was a parliamentarian who relished the high life and was much hated by the Cavaliers.

*
The Covenanters wanted to exclude the king and the bishops from control of the Church.

*
The term ‘the Good Old Cause’, took on many meanings but covered, broadly, the republican aspirations of a wide assortment
of people. It appears in the writings of such divergent personalities as the militant Puritan Harry Vane and the republican
theorist Algernon Sidney, and in the rallying call of General John Lambert in attempting to save the Commonwealth in 1660.
It also appeared in many pamphlets of the time.