Charles I

After completing this week’s readings, it seems to me that the execution of Charles I was less out of necessity and more likely a calculated political move. While he was undoubtedly a bad king, he was not the first bad king and certainly not the last. The need to oust “over half of those sitting in the House of Commons” in order to put Charles on trial and convict him of treason speaks volumes in support of this. In what was essentially a military coup, Cromwell arrested any Member of Parliament who was willing to negotiate. However, I am less concerned with whether or not Charles I deserved to die; that answer seems pretty clear to me. The questions that struck me most is would his legacy have been as impactful if he hadn’t been executed and would England have returned to a monarchy if Charles I had not acted the way he had before his death?

Almost any citizen living in England during the reign of Charles I would have agreed that he was a bad ruler. If that was the case, how did he manage to achieve the image of a martyr that he did and the myth surrounding him after his death? The answer to that lies in his conduct during his trial. He remained “true to his conscience”, regardless of the personal cost. While sealing his own fate he laid the framework for a monarchy to be later reinstated. He was able to show the tyrannical nature of the Rump Parliament while simultaneously reconstructing his image of what many would have called a traitor to “the honorable, Christian protector of the constitution and of the people”. I believe that if Charles had conducted himself differently during his trial that the republic either would not have ever returned to a monarchy or at least taken much longer than the short decade it lasted before Charles II was asked to return from exile to rule.