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England's “Black Tribunal“: an Analysis of the Regicide Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

William L. Sachse
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Extract

On January 6, 1649 the House of Commons set its seal of approval on the agency by which Charles I would be tried and sentenced to death. By an Act “for erecting of a High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England,” he was charged with “a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and, in their place, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government.” The Commons maintained that they had shown tolerance toward such “high and treasonable offenses.” But the King's persistence in perverse activities — his raising of “new commotions, rebellions and invasions” — had forced them to take the present course. They were determined that no future ruler should “presume traitorously or maliciously to imagine or contrive the enslaving or destroying of the English nation, and to expect impunity for so doing.” The measure designated one hundred and thirty-five persons to try and adjudge the royal defendant.

Thus came into being the most extraordinary judicial body to be met with in English history. Certainly, no court has ever been so vigorously disclaimed as to jurisdiction, or so bitterly vilified as to personnel. To the Cavaliers, who had fought for Charles at Marston Moor and Naseby, as well as to the Presbyterians, who had trooped under the banners of Parliament to reshape, but not destroy, the monarchy, the court and its works were anathema.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , May 1973 , pp. 69 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1973

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References

1. Journals of the House of Commons, VI, 110–13Google Scholar; Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (London, 1911), I, 1253–55Google Scholar.

2. For instance, England's Black Tribunall, Set Forth in the Triall of King Charles I (London, 1660)Google Scholar. Other invidious labels were applied, as in such titles as: A Hue and Cry after the High Court of Injustice (London, 1660)Google Scholar; Cromwell's Bloody Slaughter House (London, 1660)Google Scholar; Prynne's, WilliamBriefe Memento to the Present Unparliamentary Junto (London, 1649)Google Scholar.

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18. Whitelocke held that Ireton “had a little knowledge of the law, which led him into the more errors”: Whitelocke, , Memorials, II, 473Google Scholar.

19. They were, respectively, Recorders of Great Yarmouth, Reading, Basingstoke and Winchester.

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24. Sir Arthur Haselrig, one of the M. P.s whom Charles attempted to arrest in 1642, is said to have done so, though his name appears in the commission.

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29. See above, p. 69. According to Clarendon, “all the chief officers of the army were named, and accepted the office”: Clarendon, , History, IV, 474Google Scholar.

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45. Algernon Sidney and Lord Lisle.

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47. The author of The History of King-killers, or, the Fanatick Martyrology (London, 1720)Google Scholar claimed that Danvers and Mildmay were the only commissioners “of whom his Majesty had any personal knowledge” (pt. v, p. 36). This seems incredible. Warwick adds Lord Monson and Cornelius Holland to the “King's own faithless servants”: Warwick, , Memoirs, p. 336Google Scholar. Charles told Sir Thomas Herbert that he knew but eight of the faces: Stevenson, Gertrude S. (ed.), Charles I in Captivity, from Contemporary Sources (New York, 1927), p. 190Google Scholar.

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50. A colonel, Moore also served as Mayor of Liverpool and fitted out ships at his own expense for the war in Ireland; he is said to have been £10,000 in debt when he died in 1650: ibid., p. 277. Yule names Lord Grey of Groby, Simon Mayne, Henry Marten, Lord Monson, Sir Gregory Norton and Robert Wallop as examples of radical M.P.s who were of the “greater gentry”; Yule, George, The Independents in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1958), p. 49Google Scholar.

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53. In Noble, Mark, Lives of the English Regicides (Birmingham, 1798)Google Scholar.

54. See “Account of the Sales of Bishops' Lands between the Years 1647 and 1651,” Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica (London, 1834–1843), I, 1–8, 122–27, 284–92Google Scholar. For contemporary comment, see History of King-killers and True Characters; also Oliver Cromwell, the Late Great Tirant His Life-guard (London, 1660)Google Scholar.

55. The author of Invisible John Made Visible (London, 1659)Google Scholar accused Barkstead of supporting a commonwealth “from no other principle then the preservation of his interests” (p. 4). It was said of Goffe: “Gain was the only God he really worshipped, and therefore [he] could change principles as was most for his interest,” and of Rowe: “the main Article of his Religion was Gain, and therefore he so closely adher'd to the prevailing Party”: History of King-killers, II, 12, 85Google Scholar. Among the commissioners for sequestrations we find George Fleetwood and Simon Mayne; among the members of the committee for compounding, Nicholas Love, Gregory Clement, John Blakiston, Miles Corbett.

56. That is, men serving as aldermen in January, 1649: Thomas Atkins, Thomas Andrews, John Fowke, Isaac Pennington and Rowland Wilson. Atkins, Fowke and Wilson never attended.

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58. History of King-killers, pt. iii, 29.

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60. Beaven, , Aldermen, II, 72, 290Google Scholar. John Barkstead, an active participant, did not become prominent in City affairs until the 1650s.

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63. According to Clarendon, the Rump “laid this for a ground, that if they should make only their own members to be judges in this case, they might appear in the eyes of the people to be too much parties, as having from the beginning maintained a war, though defensive, against the King, and so not so fit to be the only judges who were in the fault: on the other hand, if they should name none of themselves, it might be interpreted that they looked upon it as too dangerous a province to engage themselves in, and therefore they had put it off to others; which would discourage others from undertaking it”: Clarendon, , History, IV, 474Google Scholar.

64. At the Restoration, several tried to prove that they had shown some consideration for Charles. John Downes pled that he had attempted to procure a hearing for the King, in his True and Humble Representation … Touching the Death of the Late King (London, 1660)Google Scholar; according to Perrinchief, Downes “endeavoured to make a Mutiny in the Army to hinder the wickedness”: Royal Martyr, pp. 203-4. Edmund Harvey claimed that he, with a few others, had tried to avert the sentence: The State of the Case of Edmund Harvy, Prisoner in the Tower of London (London, 1660)Google Scholar, reprinted in Somers Tracts, ed. SirScott, Walter (London, 1809–1815), X, 107Google Scholar. See also Considerations Humbly Tendered by Simon Mayne, to Shew that He Was no Contriver of That Horrid Action of the Death of the Late King (London, 1660)Google Scholar, also in Somers Tracts, X, 196–97Google Scholar. Yet two of these men, Downes and Mayne, signed the death warrant, and all were present for the sentence.