After reading the articles about the execution of Charles I and the circumstances leading up to it, I think that he did deserve to be executed. I was very surprised that I felt this way because I am against the death penalty, and in my blog post last week I wrote that I didn’t believe tyrannicide was the best solution for getting rid of a tyrant leader. However, in this particular situation, I don’t think that there were many alternative solutions that would not have caused more instability in England, which had already gone through a massive civil war due to Charles’ conflicts with Parliament.
The article outlining the arguments for and against the execution of Charles I points out that Charles surrendered to the Scots in 1646, which ended the civil war, but he was not executed until 1649. During these three years, he was given the opportunity to negotiate a lasting agreement with Parliament and return to his position as king. However, he was not willing to do this because he was extremely stubborn and believed that “his conscience was the voice of God.” This difficult personality was what caused him to have so many problems with Parliament in the first place. Rather than try to make compromises, he convinced a Scottish faction to invade England and help him restore the throne. This would have caused a second civil war when thousands of people had died in the first war a few years earlier. To me, this shows that he was not ever going to change if he was given the chance to rule again, and England needed to get rid of him definitively.
Be First to Comment