Book review: The King’s Revenge by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh

The King’s Revenge by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh

Little, Brown, 383pp, £20

Much of Jordan and Walsh’s well-written and meticulously researched book covers the events leading up to the Civil War and to Charles I’s execution. It is necessary background to the later pursuit of those involved and it whets the reader’s appetite to know who was caught and how they were punished.

After rejecting a deal for a constitutional monarchy while in opulent captivity in Hampton Court, Charles I escaped to the Isle of Wight. When negotiations proved fruitless he was seized, brought to the mainland and eventually, after an army coup to bypass parliament, held in Windsor Castle. That series of events led to what must be the first war crimes trial against a head of state and to public exposure for those who would later be held responsible for his execution. They came from a broad cross-section of society in order to give the process legitimacy. They were lawyers, aristocrats, parliamentarians and working men who acted as both guards and executioners.

The authors rightly point out the long-term significance of the trial, which has been undervalued in other histories of the period. It established the supremacy of parliament and led to increased religious freedom as well as to recognition of the independence of the judiciary. Some of these developments would get lost in later decades but the precedent for their return had been established. In the authors’ view, the trial of Charles I provided “the basis of the rights and freedoms we take for granted today”.

At the end of his life, the father promised forgiveness. The son was not listening. Within weeks of his father’s death, his heir promised “to chase, pursue, kill and destroy as traitors and rebels” those who had participated in any way in his father’s death. That vendetta is what this book is about.

It was not something Charles delegated to his supporters. He took a direct interest in tracking down and punishing individuals, on occasion interviewing them personally. He was assisted during his exile in The Hague by the Marquis of Montrose, whom he would later have executed at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh for having forced him to sign the Covenant as the price of being crowned King in Scotland in 1651.

In the months immediately after Charles I’s execution, the author of the charges against him was murdered in The Hague where he was the parliamentary emissary. Anthony Ascham, an academic and political theorist who had argued against royal power, was murdered in Spain where he was ambassador. No-one was safe even during Cromwell’s rule but the real fear returned with Charles II’s restoration in 1660. The biggest catch would have been Cromwell himself but he died of natural causes in 1658. By that time, 15 of the 59 judges at the royal trial had been killed.

That was just the beginning. George Monck, later to be ennobled as Duke of Albemarle, but in the Cromwell years commander-in-chief of the English army in Scotland, based in Dalkeith, was offered inducements, including £100,000, to switch to the new king’s side and became the mastermind of the restoration and pursuit of his former allies. As the authors say, “Monck was a man who had learned during his life that he could best survive by blowing in the wind. His famed inscrutability stemmed from his fear that he might misread the weather.” If they’d said that in the mid-1660’s, they would have been on his list.

Not all the regicides were condemned to death. Many – like John Milton and John Bunyan – were heavily fined or lost their lands. Others fled abroad: the Netherlands, Spain and eventually Switzerland had been shown to be unsafe, so some went to New England. The mastermind of the European hunt was Sir George Downing who gave his name to the famous street. He was an “odious, treacherous turncoat” which must be as serious as some of the abuse suffered by later residents of the street that bears his name. Particular effort was put into finding the king’s executioner and his assistant. Both wore disguises on the day and speculation was rife as to their identity. It was never proved but it was assumed that the man who wielded the axe was the common hangman Richard Brandon, who had already died a natural death.

Those who went to trial did not receive any real justice. They were denied legal representation and the number of witnesses needed for proof was reduced from two to one. Many nervous former supporters of Cromwell were anxious to be helpful to prove loyalty to the House of Stuart. As one condemned man said on the scaffold “brother has betrayed brother”.

The book marks the contribution made by the regicides to the later growth of our constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy and, for the most part, religious tolerance.