Regicide is not a term recognised in English law, and there is no agreed definition, with some historians including all 104 individuals. Twenty of the fifty-nine Commissioners died before the Restoration, including John Bradshaw, who presided over the trial, and Oliver Cromwell, its originator. Eight of the survivors were executed, sixteen died awaiting trial or later in prison, two were pardoned, and the remainder escaped into exile.
In January 1649 a trial was arranged, composed of 135 commissioners. Some were informed beforehand of their summons, and refused to participate, but most were named without their consent being sought. Forty-seven of those named did not appear either in the preliminary closed sessions or the subsequent public trial.[2] At the end of the four-day trial, 67 commissioners stood to signify that they judged Charles I had "traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the people therein represented".[3][2] Fifty-seven of the commissioners present signed the death warrant; two further commissioners added their names subsequently. The following day, 30 January, Charles I was beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall;[2][4] Charles II went into exile.[2] The English monarchy was replaced with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then the Protectorate (1653–1659) under Cromwell's personal rule.[5][6]
Following the death of Cromwell in 1658 a power struggle ensued. General George Monck—who had fought for the King until his capture, but had joined Cromwell during the Interregnum—brought an army down from his base in Scotland and restored order; he arranged for elections to be held in early 1660. He began discussions with Charles II who made the Declaration of Breda—on Monck's advice—which offered reconciliation, forgiveness, and moderation in religious and political matters. Parliament sent an invitation to Charles to return, accepting the Restoration of the monarchy as the English political form.[7] Charles arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660 and reached London on 29 May, his 30th birthday.[8]
Treatment of the regicides
In 1660, Parliament passed the Indemnity and Oblivion Act,[b] which granted amnesty to many of those who had supported the Parliament during the Civil War and the Interregnum, although 104 people were specifically excluded. Of those, 49 named individuals and the two unknown executioners were to face a capital charge.[2][9] According to Howard Nenner, writing for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Charles would probably have been content with a smaller number to be punished, but Parliament took a strong line.[2]
Of those who were listed to receive punishment, 24 had already died, including Cromwell, John Bradshaw, the judge who was president of the court, and Henry Ireton.[2] They were given a posthumous execution: their remains were exhumed, and they were hanged, beheaded and their remains cast into a pit below the gallows. Their heads were placed on spikes above Westminster Hall, the building where the High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I had sat.[10] In 1660, six of the commissioners and four others were found guilty of regicide and executed. One was hanged and nine were hanged, drawn and quartered.
On Monday 15 October 1660, Pepys records in his diary that "this morning Mr Carew was hanged and quartered at Charing Cross; but his quarters, by a great favour, are not to be hanged up." Five days later he writes, "I saw the limbs of some of our new traitors set upon Aldersgate, which was a sad sight to see; and a bloody week this and the last have been, there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered."[11] In 1662, three more regicides were hanged, drawn and quartered. Some others were pardoned, while a further nineteen served life imprisonment.[12] Most had their property confiscated and many were banned from holding office or title again in the future.
Twenty-one of those under threat fled Britain, mostly settling in the Netherlands or Switzerland, although some were captured and returned to England, or murdered by Royalist sympathisers. Three of the regicides, John Dixwell, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, fled to New England, where they avoided capture, despite a search.[2][c]
Nenner records that there is no agreed definition of who is included in the list of regicides. The Indemnity and Oblivion Act did not use the term either as a definition of the act, or as a label for those involved,[d] and historians have identified different groups of people as being appropriate for the name.[2]
Shortly after the Restoration in Scotland, the Scottish Parliament passed an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion. It was similar to the English Indemnity and Oblivion Act, but there were many more exceptions under the Scottish act than there were under the English one. Most of the Scottish exceptions were pecuniary, and only four men were executed, all for treason but none for regicide, of whom the Marquess of Argyll was the most prominent. He was found to be guilty of collaboration with Cromwell's government, and beheaded on 27 May 1661.[13][14]
Regicides
Commissioners who signed the death warrant
In the order in which they signed the death warrant, the Commissioners were:
Commissioners whose signatures appeared on the death warrant
Posthumous execution: disinterred, hanged at Tyburn and beheaded. His body was thrown into a pit and the head placed on a spike at the end of Westminster Hall, facing the direction of the spot where Charles I had been executed.
Posthumous execution: disinterred, hanged at Tyburn and beheaded. His body was thrown into a pit and the head placed on a spike at the end of Westminster Hall, facing the direction of the spot where Charles I had been executed.
Fled to the New Haven Colony with a co-commissioner, his son-in-law William Goffe, to avoid trial. He was alive but in poor health in 1674, where he was sought by the agents of Charles II but shielded by the sympathetic colonists. He probably died in 1675.
Fled to Germany, but was arrested by the English Ambassador to the Netherlands, Sir George Downing. He was tried, found guilty and hanged, drawn and quartered in April 1662.
Posthumous execution: disinterred, hanged at Tyburn and beheaded. His body was thrown into a pit and the head placed on a spike at the end of Westminster Hall, facing the direction of the spot where Charles I had been executed.
Fled to France; later returned and was found guilty. Sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Died 1666 in prison on Jersey.
Fled to the New Haven Colony with a co-commissioner, his father-in-law Edward Whalley; escaped from being arrested in 1678. Burke's Peerage reports that William Goffe died in New Haven, Ct in 1680.[33]
First to be found guilty. Was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on 13 October 1660. He was a leader of the Fifth Monarchists, who still posed a threat to the Restoration.
Brought to trial, sentenced to death but sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was held in the Tower of London until 1664 and was transported to Mont Orgueil castle in Jersey. Died 1668.
Fled to the Netherlands; arrested by the English ambassador to the Netherlands Sir George Downing; extradited; tried; found guilty; and was hanged, drawn and quartered on 19 April 1662.
Attended several sessions including 27 January when the sentence was agreed upon. His name was one of 24 dead regicides who were excepted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660 (section XXXVII of the act).
Attended three sessions, including 27 January when the sentence was agreed upon. His name was one of 24 dead regicides who were excepted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660 (section XXXVII of the act).
Attended 14 sessions. He was excepted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, allowing the state to confiscate the property that had belonged to him (section XXXVII of the act).
Escaped and died in exile on the European mainland in 1680. Due to an oversight in the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, although he lost his title, the baronetcy passed to the next in line on his death.
Escaped to Lausanne, Switzerland but was shot or stabbed by the Irish Royalist James Fitz Edmond Cotter (using the alias Thomas Macdonnell) in August 1664.
He took no part in the trial other than being present when the sentence was agreed. At the Restoration he was contrite and, after making an abject submission to Parliament, he was allowed to depart unpunished. Died 1664 or 1665.
He was debarred from sitting on the High Court for heterodoxy on 26 January 1649, one day before the sentence was pronounced. His name was one of 24 dead regicides who were excepted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act in 1660. Died 1657.
He only attended two sittings at the trial and he did not sign Charles's death warrant, so he was able to use the influence of his brother-in-law Earl of Sandwich, to secure his pardon, although he was banned for life from holding any office.
Refused to sign the order to the executioners, which Francis Hacker did in his place. He testified against Daniel Axtell and Hacker, and was pardoned. Died in 1660.
Was appointed a commissioner but never sat in the court.[110] He was pardoned for showing courtesy to the King and for testifying against Daniel Axtell and Francis Hacker. Died in 1681.
Article XXXIV of the Act of Pardon and Oblivion listed by name 49 of the men mentioned here and also two others who were unnamed and identified as "those two persons, ... who being disguised by frocks and vizors, did appear upon the scaffold erected before Whitehall". This was the headsman and his assistant. Sidney Lee states in the Dictionary of National Biography (1866) that the headsman may have been Richard Brandon.
Lambert was not in London for the trial of Charles I. At the Restoration, he was found guilty of high treason and remained in custody for the rest of his life, first in Guernsey and then on Drake's Island, where he died in 1683/84.
After much debate in Parliament, he was exempted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act. He was tried for high treason, found guilty and beheaded on Tower Hill in June 1662.
Under the Scottish Act of indemnity and oblivion (9 September 1662), as with the English act most were pardoned and their crimes forgotten, however, a few members of the previous regime were tried and found guilty of treason (for more details see General pardon and exceptions in Scotland):
Actions under the Scottish Act of indemnity and oblivion
At his trial in Edinburgh Argyll was acquitted of complicity in the death of Charles I, and his escape from the whole charge seemed imminent, but the arrival of a packet of letters written by Argyll to Monck showed conclusively his collaboration with Cromwell's government, particularly in the suppression of Glencairn's Royalist rising in 1652. He was immediately sentenced to death.[120]
On 20 February 1661 Guthrie was arraigned for high treason before the parliament, with Earl of Middleton presiding as commissioner. The indictment had six counts; the contriving of the "Western Remonstrance" and the rejection of the king's ecclesiastical authority were, from a legal point of view, the most formidable charges. The trial was not concluded until 11 April. On 28 May parliament, having found him guilty of treason, ordered him to be hanged.[121]
At the Restoration Warriston fled to Holland and thence to Hamburg in Germany. He was condemned to death (and stripped of his properties and title) in absentia on 15 May 1661.[122] In 1663, having ventured into France, he was discovered at Rouen, and with the consent of Louis XIV was brought to England and imprisoned in the Tower of London. In June he was taken to Edinburgh and confined in the Tolbooth, and was hanged on 22 July 1663.[123]
In 1661, Home had his estates sequestrated for being with the English Parliamentary army against King Charles II's army at the Battle of Worcester in 1651.[125][126] After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the estates were restored to his son George.[127]
^The long title of the Act is "An act of free and generall pardon indemnity and oblivion",(Raithby 1819, p. 226).
^The three are commemorated by three intersecting major avenues in New Haven (Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue, and Goffe Street), and by place names in other Connecticut towns (Major 2013, p. 153).
^Nenner writes that "Regicide was a sin, but it was not a crime. In English law it never had been. The government therefore eschewed the word, abandoning the debate over its use to the arena of popular discourse, where the allegations of regicide were trumpeted from the pulpit and elaborated in the press" (Nenner 2004).
Brown, K. M.; et al., eds. (2007–2012). "Decreet of forfeiture against John Home of Kello (NAS. PA6/16, 21 May 1661)". The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707. University of St Andrews. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
Jordan, Don; Walsh, Michael (2013). The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History. London: Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN978-0-3491-2376-9.
Morison, William Maxwell (1803). The decisions of the Court of Session: from its first institution to the present time: digested under proper heads, in the form of a dictionary. Vol. 13. Scotland: Bell. p. 42.
Noble, Mark (1798). The lives of the English regicides: and other commissioners of the pretended High court of justice, appointed to sit in judgment upon their sovereign, King Charles the First., volume I, volume II