Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, was publicly executed on 30 January 1649 outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall, London. The execution was the culmination of political and military conflicts between the royalists and the parliamentarians in England during the English Civil War, leading to Charles's capture and his trial. On 27 January 1649 the parliamentarian High Court of Justice had declared Charles guilty of attempting to "uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people" and sentenced him to death by beheading.
Charles spent his last few days in St James's Palace, accompanied by his most loyal subjects and visited by his family. On 30 January he was taken to a large black scaffold constructed in front of the Banqueting House, where a large crowd had gathered. Charles stepped onto the scaffold and gave his last speech, declaring his innocence of the crimes of which parliament had accused him, and claiming himself a "martyr of the people". The crowd could not hear the speech, owing to the many parliamentarian guards blocking the scaffold, but Charles's companion, Bishop William Juxon, recorded it in shorthand. Charles gave a few last words to Juxon, claiming an "incorruptible crown" for himself in Heaven, and put his head on the block. He waited a few moments, and after giving a signal that he was ready, the anonymous executioner beheaded Charles with a single blow and held Charles's head up to the crowd silently, dropping it into the swarm of soldiers soon after.
The execution has been described as one of the most significant and controversial events in English history. Some viewed it as the martyrdom of an innocent man; the contemporaneous historian Edward Hyde described "a year of reproach and infamy above all years which had passed before it; a year of the highest dissimulation and hypocrisy, of the deepest villainy and most bloody treasons that any nation was ever cursed with"; and the later Tory writer Isaac D'Israeli wrote of Charles as "having received the axe with the same collectedness of thought and died with the majesty with which he had lived", dying a "civil and political" martyr to Britain. Still others viewed it as a vital step towards democracy in Britain, with the prosecutor of Charles I, John Cook, declaring that it "pronounced sentence not only against one tyrant but against tyranny itself" and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, a Whig historian, writing that "with Charles's death the main obstacle to the establishment of a constitutional system had been removed. [...] The monarchy, as Charles understood it, had disappeared forever".
Execution
The execution was set to be carried out on 30 January 1649. On 28 January the King was moved from the Palace of Whitehall to St James's Palace, likely to avoid the noise of the scaffold being set up outside the Banqueting House (at its rear side on the street of Whitehall). Charles spent the day praying with the Bishop of London, William Juxon.
On 29 January Charles burnt his personal papers and ciphered correspondence. He had not seen his children for 15 months, so the parliamentarians allowed him to talk to his children, Elizabeth and Henry, for one last time. He instructed the 13-year-old Elizabeth to be faithful to "true Protestant religion" and to tell her mother that "his thoughts had never strayed from her". He instructed the 10-year-old Henry to "not be made a king" by the Parliamentarians, being that many suspected they would install Henry as a puppet king. Charles divided his jewels among the children, leaving him with only his George (an enamelled figure of Saint George, worn as a part of the ceremonial dress of the Order of the Garter). Charles spent his last night restless, going to sleep only at 2 am.
Charles awoke early on the day of his execution. He began dressing at 5 am in fine clothes, all black, and his blue Garter sash. His preparation lasted until dawn. He instructed the Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Thomas Herbert, on what would be done with the few possessions he had left. He requested one extra shirt from Herbert, so that the crowd gathered would not see him shiver from the cold and mistake it for cowardice. Before leaving, Juxon gave Charles the Blessed Sacrament. At 10 am Colonel Francis Hacker instructed Charles to go to Whitehall, ready for his execution. At noon Charles drank a glass of claret wine and ate a piece of bread, reportedly having been persuaded to this effect by Juxon.
A large crowd had amassed outside the Banqueting House, where the platform for Charles's execution was set up. The platform was draped in black and staples had been driven into the wood for ropes to be run through if Charles needed to be restrained. The execution block was so low that the King would have had to prostrate himself to place his head on the block, a submissive pose as compared to kneeling before the block. The executioners were hidden behind face masks and wigs to prevent identification.
As for the People, truly I desire their liberty and freedom, as much as any whosoever; but I must tell you, that their liberty and freedom consists in having of government by those laws, by which their lives, and their goods may be most their own. It is not for them to have a share in Government, that is nothing Sirs, appertaining unto them. A Subject and a Sovereign are clean different things; and therefore until that be done, I mean, until the people be put into that liberty, which I speak of; certainly they will never enjoy themselves.
— Excerpt from Charles I's speech upon the scaffold, as recorded by Juxon.
Just before 2 pm, Colonel Hacker called Charles to the scaffold. Charles came through the window of the Banqueting Hall to the scaffold in what Herbert described as "the saddest sight England ever saw". Charles saw the crowd and realised that the barrier of guards prevented the crowd from hearing any speech he would make, so he addressed his speech to Juxon and the regicide Matthew Thomlinson, the former of whom recorded the speech in shorthand. He declared that he was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused, that he was faithful to Christianity, and that it was Parliament that had been the cause of the wars leading up to his execution. He called himself "a martyr of the people"—one who would die for their rights.
Charles asked Juxon for his silk nightcap to put on, so that the executioner would not be troubled by his hair. He turned to Juxon and declared he "would go from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible crown"—claiming his perceived righteous place in Heaven. Charles gave Juxon his George, sash and cloak—uttering one cryptic word: "remember". Charles laid his neck out on the block and asked the executioner to wait for his signal to behead him. A moment passed and Charles gave the signal; the executioner beheaded him in one clean blow.
The executioner silently held up Charles's head to the spectators. He did not utter the customary cry of "Behold the head of a traitor!" either from inexperience or fear of identification. According to the royalist Philip Henry, the crowd let out a loud groan—a 17-year-old Henry writing of "such a groan [...] as I never heard before and I desire I may never hear again"—though such a groan is not reported by any other contemporary account of the execution. The executioner dropped the King's head into the crowd and the soldiers swarmed around it, dipping their handkerchiefs in his blood and cutting off locks of his hair. The body was then put in a coffin and covered with black velvet. It was temporarily placed in the King's former 'lodging chamber' within Whitehall.
Executioner
The identities of the executioner of Charles I and his assistant were never revealed to the public, with crude face masks and wigs hiding them at the execution, and they were probably known only to Oliver Cromwell and a few of his colleagues. The clean cut on Charles's head and the fact the executioner held up Charles's head after the execution suggests the executioner was experienced in the use of an axe, although the fact he did not call out "Behold the head of a traitor!" could suggest either that he was inexperienced in the public execution of traitors, or that he simply feared identification from his voice.
There was much speculation among the public on the identity of the executioner, with several contradictory identifications appearing in the popular press. These included Richard Brandon, William Hulet, William Walker, Hugh Peter, George Joyce, John Bigg, Gregory Brandon and even—as one French report alleged—Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax themselves. Though many of these proved to be unfounded rumours (the accusations directed towards the then-dead Gregory Brandon, and towards Cromwell and Fairfax, have not been taken seriously by historians), some may have been accurate.
Colonel John Hewson was given the task of finding an executioner and he offered 40 soldiers the position of executioner or assistant in exchange for £100 and quick promotion, though none came forward immediately. It has been suggested that one of these soldiers later accepted the job, the most probable candidate among the men being Hulet. Shortly after the execution, Hulet received a prominent and swift promotion and he was not seen to be present on the day of Charles's execution. His alibi consisted of the claim he was imprisoned on the day for refusing the position, though this seems to conflict with his promotion soon after. William Hulet was tried as the executioner in October 1660, upon the Restoration, and he was sentenced to death for his supposed part in the execution. This sentence was soon overturned and Hulet was pardoned after some exculpatory evidence was presented to the judge.
Overall, the most likely candidate for the executioner was Richard Brandon, the common hangman at the time of Charles's execution. He would have been experienced, explaining the clean cut, and he is reported to have received £30 around the time of the execution. He was also the executioner of other royalists before, and after, Charles's execution—including William Laud and Lord Capel. Despite this, Brandon denied being the executioner throughout his life, and a contemporary letter claims that he refused a parliamentarian offer of £200 to perform the execution. A tract published shortly after Brandon's death, The Confession of Richard Brandon, claims to contain a deathbed confession of Brandon to the execution of Charles, though it attracted little attention in its time and is now regarded as a forgery.
Of the other suggested candidates: Peter had prominently advocated for Charles's death but was absent from his execution, though he was reported to have been kept at home through illness. Joyce was a loyal fanatic of Cromwell and had, earlier in the war, captured the King from Holdenby House. William Walker was a parliamentarian soldier who, according to local tradition, had confessed to the regicide several times. Bigg was a clerk of the regicide Simon Mayne and later hermit who, according to local tradition, became a hermit shortly after the Restoration out of fear for being tried as the executioner.
Burial
The sequence of events between Charles's execution and burial are not uniformly agreed upon in historical sources. In one account, Charles's corpse was immediately placed in a coffin and moved to a room in the Palace of Whitehall for public display for several days. Several sources report the body was embalmed at Whitehall before being moved to St James's Palace, though the date and location of this process is not certain. Most sources agree the embalming was performed by Thomas Trapham, the surgeon-general of the New Model Army. One contemporary source alleges that Trapham was ordered to sew Charles's head back onto his body, but no original documentation survives to substantiate this order. The body remained at St James's Palace until 7 February while Parliament decided where it should be buried.
On 8 February, Charles was buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, in the quire vault containing the remains of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. The location of Charles's burial was lost in time and rediscovered in 1813, when workmen for King George III inadvertently breached one of the walls of the vault. The Prince Regent ordered the identification of Charles's body among the vault's contents; identification was confirmed by an inscription of Charles's name in the lead coffin and the year of his death, as well as the brief physical removal of Charles's head, which proved it had been "severed from the body by 'a heavy blow, inflicted by a very sharp instrument.'"
Reaction
In Britain
That thence the Royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn:
While round the armèd bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;
— From Andrew Marvell's "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", written 1650.
On his execution day, the reports of Charles's last actions were fitting for his later portrayal as a martyr—as the biographer Geoffrey Robertson put it, he "played the martyr's part almost to perfection". This was certainly no accident; a flurry of royalist reports overstated the horror of the crowd and the "biblical innocence" of Charles in his execution. Even Charles showed planning for his future martyrdom: apparently delighted that the biblical passage to be read upon the day of his execution was Matthew's account of the Crucifixion. He had hinted to his cousin the Duke of Hamilton in 1642:
... yet I cannot but tell you, I have set up my rest upon the Justice of my Cause, being resolved, that no extremity or misfortune shall make me yield; for I will be either a Glorious King, or a Patient Martyr, and as yet not being the first, nor at this present apprehending the other, I think it now no unfit time, to express this my Resolution unto you ...
In the opinion of Daniel P. Klein: "Charles was a defeated and humiliated king in 1649. Yet by tying his trial to Christ's, the King was able to lay claim to martyrdom, connecting his defeated political cause with religious truth."