Through the debate around Charles I execution, I am most perplexed by the immediate aftermath of his death. He was ordered to be executed by the Rump Parliament for “levying war against the said Parliament and people,” however the people immediately mourned him (Get History). Despite tradition, “the executioner did not say the usual phrase of behold the head of a traitor,” rather his beheading was met with groans and mass sadness (Get History). The last article even said, “no monarch ‘ever left the world with more sorrow.’” He became a martyr in England and people worshiped his name. Yet, they had killed him.
The attitude of the people makes me wonder about how easy it is for a society to forget. Charles I was guilty of unnecessarily raging war on his people and causing the death of many. He was described in the readings as stubborn, hard to work with, and believed that “the king was not bound by the law, for the king came before the law” (Discourse of Sovereignty 208). His reign became a tyranny according to our readings, but his legacy was much more positive. People, Royalists especially in the 1650s, found strength and hope in the myths that surrounded his death and the way he held himself till the very end. Cromwell, in the last reading, was accused of making Charles’s execution happen out of personal vengeance. He cleared out Charles’s supporters from Parliament and pushed his case through. I wonder, how did an entire country allow their leader to be killed? How did Parliament succumb to one man’s angry orders? Why was there not more noise around the issue?
You make really good points about how the country completely forgot all of the bad things he did, including going to Scotland to try and use their army to take back the throne. You have a driving question of how the people let themselves be so blind in the whole situation so do you think that it was their fault their king was executed? It’s an interesting idea because from the last website, the argument for how his death was not fair talks about how Cromwell and his men also went against the House of Lords and did things that the people did not want but he was not seen as bad (although of course he did not start two civil wars).