The King's Revenge (24 page)

Hugh Peters did not receive a fair showing in the press, and he would be treated no better in his trial the following month
– nor would those tried with him.

8–12 October 1660

The trial of the regicides was a sensation even before it opened. London talked of nothing else: a mass trial of those who
only months before had ruled the land and were now accused of treason for killing the king. Thanks to meticulous preparation
behind the scenes, it was to be a political show trial. Medieval law was invoked to frame watertight charges, and ancient
rules of evidence were cast aside to ensure convictions. As each prisoner was brought before the court – and before a word
of evidence was heard – the public hangman came and stood beside him holding a noose.
¹
The public entered into the sense of theatre. When the elderly cleric Hugh Peters stood trial and invoked the name of God,
the crowd shrieked with laughter – hardly normal behaviour in a religious and superstitious age.

In one respect, the regicides were not the only ones to be tried: many of those who sat in judgment were also on trial, or
at least their loyalty was on trial. Men like George Monck sat on the judges’ bench to condemn their former
colleagues to a slow and agonising death, thereby proving to their new king that they were now royalists through and through.

Of those regicides appearing on the death list finally agreed by the Houses of Parliament and excluded from pardon, sixteen
avoided being sent for trial thanks to a good word from well-placed allies, or by having shown themselves to be amenable to
the new regime. The death list was, of course, fleshed out with the names of some who were not actual regicides, including
John Cook, the attorney-general, and Colonels Axtell and Hacker, who commanded the guard during the trial and execution. As
we have seen, at one stage the king’s masked executioners were added to the list even though their identity was at best uncertain.

In the midst of the excitement and expectation, the king grew silent. A Cavalier Parliament, watched over by the king’s brothers
and his parliamentary contacts, had drawn up the list of those to be tried. Charles’s placemen had done their jobs in other
ways, too; the highest lawyers in the land, all royal appointees, had designed the trials in such a way that there could only
be one possible outcome. Yet we have no record of what Charles thought as he watched these preparations. He must have recalled
his father’s death and his own reactive declaration of bloody retribution. But none of those who knew him well or had close
contact with him chose to record the king’s thoughts or feelings regarding this key event.

Among the few letters we have from Charles about this time are two written shortly before and after the trial to his Chancellor,
Edward Hyde. The first tells Hyde he needs to have some letters prepared for signature by noon as the king is going to play
tennis; the second asks him when affairs of state will allow Charles the time to visit his sister in Tonbridge.
²
Prior to the trial, Charles did have one very serious matter to attend to – the secret marriage of his brother James to Anne
Hyde, Edward’s pregnant daughter, thus taking the duke out of the running for any suitable royal marriage that might cement
or strengthen an alliance. The marriage was a great surprise to many – including the king – for James was known to be every
bit as much a womaniser as his elder brother. Although
the duke and his friends dreamed up many scandalous stories about the girl in their endeavours to get him out of the marriage,
Charles declared that his brother had made his marital bed and would have to lie in it – which was more than he would ever
do himself.

His brother’s problems apart, everything went well for Charles II in the run-up to the trial. His anxiety to expedite the
Indemnity Bill had reflected his need to clear the Parliamentary way for two other crucial matters to be settled, and now
they were settled. The first was the dismantling of the New Model Army, and its replacement by a Cavalier-officered militia.
The army numbered some forty thousand men and, despite George Monck’s regimental purges, it remained the Cavaliers’ nightmare,
a hotbed of republicanism whose existence was a threat to the throne. A Bill to disband the army was tabled two days after
the Indemnity Bill became law. A poll tax was to be levied to pay off the men and George Monck was earmarked to help oversee
what could be an explosive process. The second matter which the King urgently wanted resolved was settled four days later
– the royal stipend, the issue that had bedevilled so many monarchs, not least his father. This too went Charles’s way. Parliament,
still in that mood of heady generosity towards its young master, voted him £1.2 million a year, which was 50 per cent more
than his estimated annual income under existing provisions.

As the trial opened, most of London had thoughts of little else. The king was often otherwise engaged; he was spending increasing
amounts of time with his new mistress, the very beautiful and willing Barbara Villiers, with whom he was totally infatuated.
It was said that their relationship ‘did so disorder him that often he was not master of himself nor capable of minding business,
which in so critical a time, required great application’.
³
Hyde, a fastidious man, found Charles’s philandering a considerable irritation. He was also infuriated by the king’s general
lack of attention to matters of state; but Charles’s inattentiveness and apparent laziness were traits
developed over long years of exile and futility and were to prove fixed within his character.

Around the country, trials were being held to silence other dissident voices, though with all attention focused on events
in London they went largely unremarked. In Bedford, the trial of an obscure Baptist preacher was held unnoticed by the weekly
news sheets. The preacher was one of hundreds of nonconformists who resisted the legislation barring anyone except ordained
Anglican ministers from preaching. His name was John Bunyan.

At his trial, Bunyan admitted he was a persistent offender, but said he intended to remain so. The judge urged him to stop
preaching and so save himself from years in prison and his wife and family from penury. Bunyan refused and the judge sentenced
him to six years, saying: ‘I strongly suspect that we have heard the last we shall ever hear from Mr. John Bunyan.’ He could
not have been more wrong. After serving his six years, Bunyan continued preaching and received six more years. In prison,
he sat down to write the book that became the best-selling work of fiction of the century.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
has never been out of print since.
⁴

The London trials began five weeks after Bunyan’s first court appearance. Twenty-eight men were on trial. If found guilty,
they faced death by the grisly form of torture known as hanging, drawing and quartering. The most important of these were
twenty-four who had sat as judges at the king’s trial. Most of them had played other key roles in bringing the king to trial.
Sir Hardress Waller had participated in Pride’s Purge before sitting in judgment. He signed the king’s death warrant and helped
organise the execution. Of Thomas Harrison we have already heard a good deal. Colonel Adrian Scroop was a member of the Oxfordshire
gentry who also supported Pride’s Purge. He helped organise the king’s trial before sitting in judgment and signing the death
warrant. Gilbert Millington was a wealthy barrister and one of the few senior lawyers willing to put aside personal interest
for what he saw as the national good. He took part in the trial and voted for the king’s death. In
1660, men like these represented a purely symbolic threat to the resurgent monarchy.
^*
The purpose of the trial was revenge against the few, so that many others who had fought against the king could pretend they
had always supported the House of Stuart. A truly vindictive arraignment was that of Hugh Peters, the Puritan preacher who
had become a target because he publicly preached in favour of the king’s trial and execution.

On 8 October, in the absence of the accused, the court sat for preliminary business at Clerkenwell in Hick’s Hall, the session
house of the county of Middlesex. We are lucky today to know anything of what occurred during the trial. In contrast to the
trial of the king, it appears no clerks were employed to keep a verbatim record. According to the Oxford antiquary Anthony
Wood, the court record was kept by the prosecutor Sir Heneage Finch, and later edited by Sir Orlando Bridgeman. This might
explain how both men come over so well in the published report.
⁵
Although the accuracy of this account cannot be entirely relied upon, it contains a remarkable amount of detail and dialogue
that rings true. The account was supplemented by reports in the news sheets and pamphlets as well as a contemporary compendium
of speeches by the regicides.
⁶

Bridgeman presided over ten other judges and thirty-four commissioners or non-judicial members. These included Edward Hyde
(whose brother was one of the judges), the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Albemarle (the former George Monck), several earls,
including Southampton, Manchester, Lindsey and Dorset, other aristocrats including Viscount Saye and Sele, and a handful of
leading parliamentarians including Denzil Holles and Arthur
Annesley. Several of these commissioners had once fought on the parliamentary side against the king and now sat in judgment
of their former comrades.

The accused were to be tried under a three-hundred-year-old Act. The Treason Act of 1351 had come into being during the reign
of Edward III, its purpose to define and limit the number of offences classed as treason. It sill exists today. The last person
to be tried under it was William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, the pro-Nazi propagandist, tried for breaking a citizen’s allegiance
to the crown and hanged.
^*

The 1351 Act defines treason as: ‘where a man doth compass or imagine the death of our said Lord the King in his realm, or
be adherent to the enemies of our Lord the King in his realm, giving to them aid or support in his realm or elsewhere …’
⁷
This definition cast the net wide enough to encompass not only those who took part in the king’s trial, but also those who
only thought about it or gave encouragement. It also included ‘levying of war against the king’. At this, some of the judges
should have felt very uncomfortable. What had the Earl of Manchester, commander of one of Parliament’s armies, done if not
wage war against the king? What about General Monck, now elevated by a grateful king to Duke of Albemarle – had he not waged
war against the king? And what of Lord Saye and Sele, a member of Parliament’s Committee of Safety during the first Civil
War – had he too not waged war against the king? Even Denzil Holles, arch-enemy of Oliver Cromwell, had fought against the
king in the first Civil War. Edmund Ludlow estimated that no fewer than fifteen of the thirty-four commissioners and eleven
judges had ‘engaged for parliament against the late king, either as members of parliament, judges or members of their army’.
⁸

No matter; such men were safe now that they were set on destroying their former allies.

After selecting and swearing in a hand-picked jury, the prosecution then lowered the bar for the amount of evidence necessary
to convict. Traditionally, in a treason trial, a minimum of two witnesses was required to prove guilt. Bridgeman announced
that one witness would now be sufficient.

The next day, 9 October, the trial began in earnest. Bridgeman explained to the jury that they were called to serve by the
Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion, under which there were several exceptions: ‘You will find in that
act there is an exception for several persons, who (for their execrable treason for sentencing to death and signing the warrant
for taking away the life of our said sovereign) are left to be proceeded against as traitors according to the laws of England
…’

Of course, this seemed to preclude men like Axtell, but Bridgeman pointed out the clause in the Treason Act of 1351 declaring
it treasonable ‘to levy war against the king’. By this clause men like Axtell were swept up.

Bridgeman took up the old matter of whether or not the king was above the law and quoted a statute from Edward III – ‘the
king can do no wrong.’ Finally, he made sure the jury knew where their duty lay: ‘To conclude, you are now to enquire of blood,
of royal blood, of sacred blood, of blood like that of saints under the altar … This blood cries for vengeance and it will
not be appeased without a bloody sacrifice.’

The indictment for high treason was then read out against the twenty-eight who were waiting in the Tower to be brought to
trial – plus three more who were absent. These were three who had fled to Holland – John Barkstead, John Okey and Miles Corbet.
For some reason, the names of many more who had fled all over Europe and to North America were omitted. Perhaps it simply
might not have looked good to have declared so many runaways beyond the reach of the court.

At six o’clock in the morning on 10 October, the prisoners were taken from their cells in the Tower and gathered in a courtyard.
Under the supervision of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Robinson, they were shepherded on to several wagons. With Sir
John in the lead and surrounded by both cavalry and foot soldiers, a wagon train set off for Newgate Prison, situated next
to the Old Bailey. The prisoners were herded into Newgate, which made a good holding point during the trial. When the call
came at nine o’clock that the judges were ready, the Sheriff of London brought the prisoners to stand before them at the Sessions
House in the Old Bailey. According to Ludlow, the trial had taken so long to organise because the authorities had had to wait
some months for the retirement of the previous sheriff, who would not have gone along with a rigged hearing.
⁹

In the seventeenth century, the Sessions House was designed so that the courtroom was partially under cover and partially
in the open air. The judges and officials sat on a raised dais at one end of the room. Facing them at the other end was a
large archway open to the elements. In this way, one whole wall of the court was open, allowing the proceedings to be visible
to passers-by. In front of the judges was a railing, known as the bar, at which the accused stood while being tried. Down
some steps and out into the open air was a boxed area in which the accused were kept under guard until called up to the bar.
Beyond that were further boxed-in areas for the public. The trial of the regicides was such a draw that the entire street
around the Sessions House was packed with thousands of spectators.