Charles I's Executioners

This biographical history of the English Civil War profiles the lives and ultimate fates of the nearly 60 men who sentenced their king to death. On January 30th, 1649, King Charles I was executed on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House of Whitehall. The parliamentarian High Court of Justice declared him guilty of treason, disregarding the Divine Right of Kings. Fifty-nine commissioners signed his death warrant. These killers of the king were soldiers, lawyers, Puritans, Republicans—and some m