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Episode: Oliver Cromwell Part 3: To Kill a King…

Author: NOISER
Duration: 01:01:13

Episode Shownotes

With the King in captivity, both sides seek a settlement. But when Charles escapes, all trust is broken. For Cromwell there is only one course of action - a solution that will plunge the British Isles into unknown territory. His Majesty must be put on trial… A Noiser production, written

by Jeff Dawson. Many thanks to Peter Gaunt, Clare Jackson, Anna Keay, John Morrill, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Micheál Ó Siochrú. This is Part 3 of 4. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
It's January the 30th, 1649. A Tuesday, just before 2pm. We're in London, outside the Palace of Whitehall. It's been the home of England's monarchs since the time of Henry VIII. The day is bitterly cold. There are ice flows on the Thames.

00:00:23 Speaker_03
Flurries of snow swirl in the air. In the yard, a crowd is gathered, marshalled by roundhead soldiers. They wait in horror as much as expectation, not fully able to process the event they're about to witness.

00:00:45 Speaker_03
Inside, Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, makes the long walk through the state rooms. He's escorted by parliamentary guards and his chaplain, Bishop William Juxon.

00:00:59 Speaker_03
Yesterday, the King said goodbye to two of his children, Elizabeth, 13, and Henry, 8. His daughter was inconsolable.

00:01:10 Speaker_03
Farewells over, he takes his last earthly steps, passing through the banqueting hall, beneath the beautiful Rubens frescoes that he himself commissioned. They show his own father, James VI and I, looking down from heaven.

00:01:28 Speaker_03
Stone masons have removed the brickwork beneath one of the windows. It is now an ad hoc doorway opening onto what appears to be a balcony. It's a wooden scaffold, constructed hastily, now draped in black cloth, as a coffin at the ready.

00:01:49 Speaker_03
As the king steps out, the crowd falls silent. He casts his eye across the assembled throne, huddled there against the January chill. He was wise to ask his valet for an extra woolen undershirt, lest his people mistake his shivers for fear.

00:02:06 Speaker_03
On the advice of the bishop, he's eaten some bread and wolfed a glass of claret. This is no task to undertake on an empty stomach, Charles turns to those on the platform, the presiding officers, plus the burly executioner and his assistant.

00:02:26 Speaker_03
Somewhat absurdly, these two men are not just masked, but in fancy dress, uniformed as sailors. They wear fake beards and wigs, their disguises held in place with fishnets pulled tight down over their heads.

00:02:42 Speaker_03
The king makes a quip about them being afraid to show their faces. They've heard such remarks a thousand times before. As is customary, he offers them a small purse of coins. Charles removes his cloak.

00:02:58 Speaker_03
He asks if his long hair might be an impediment to the Axeman's aim. The executioner suggests that it is, but helps the king tuck it up into a nightcap. He then limbers up, taking a few practice swings. The king makes a final speech.

00:03:16 Speaker_03
It's inaudible to all but those in close proximity. Something about going from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown. The block is low. You have to lay prone. An indignity, but it minimizes last-minute struggles.

00:03:35 Speaker_03
Though there are ropes at the ready should his majesty need to be tied down. He would like a moment in prayer, he says. When he's ready, he will give a signal. Flat on his belly, he mutters to himself. He then extends his arms out sideways.

00:04:04 Speaker_03
From Neuser, this is part three of the Oliver Cromwell story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's go back. It's two years previously. January 1647. The English Civil War has come to an end. The first one, that is.

00:04:33 Speaker_03
Since the resounding parliamentary triumph at Naseby, Royalist forces have collapsed. The King has turned himself over to the Scottish Army in Nottinghamshire, hoping for a shot at reconciliation.

00:04:46 Speaker_03
But now, after months of stalled negotiations, the Scots have handed him back to the English Parliament. The question still hangs as to the King's fate. After all the death and destruction, there's an urge for a post-war settlement.

00:05:02 Speaker_03
No one yet envisages a future without the participation of Charles I. He has, after all, been ordained to rule by God himself. This is still about curbing his autocratic tendencies, embedding him into a more constitutional form of government.

00:05:20 Speaker_03
This view is shared both by Parliament and the new military strongman, Oliver Cromwell. Professor Peter Gaunt,

00:05:29 Speaker_04
Parliament becomes dominated by more moderate parliamentarians who want to do a deal with the king that's a fairly soft political religious constitutional deal. There was no question of regicide or getting rid of him as yet.

00:05:46 Speaker_03
Professor John Morrow.

00:05:47 Speaker_07
It takes Connell a long time to recognise that it's going to be necessary to get rid of Charles I. Abolishing Charles I doesn't necessarily mean the abolition of monarchy.

00:05:58 Speaker_03
Despite the war that has ravaged the nation, Charles is still proving incredibly popular. The Royal Cavalcade moves south to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire, his designated place of house arrest. It is met with cheering crowds.

00:06:15 Speaker_03
But there's been too much water under the bridge, too much blood spilt for a kiss and make-up. There are too many factions within the House of Commons voicing contrasting views on how a resolution can be achieved.

00:06:29 Speaker_03
Plus, there is a more immediate issue. If you remember, England has always had an aversion to maintaining a standing army. Military forces are raised to fight a war and then disbanded afterwards.

00:06:45 Speaker_03
A body of fighting men is a dangerous thing to have sitting around. The dissolution of Cromwell's new model army is therefore seen as a priority.

00:06:55 Speaker_03
Unfortunately, this band of brothers, battle-hardened, some twenty thousand strong, is in no mood for being demobbed. Their pay is in arrears.

00:07:06 Speaker_03
They're owed collectively a whopping three hundred thousand pounds, an eye-watering amount for the Treasury to find.

00:07:15 Speaker_04
new model army feels let down by the English parliament in terms of pay, indemnity, provision for military widows and so on.

00:07:25 Speaker_04
Parliament isn't supporting its victorious army and they begin falling out over bread and butter military issues as well as much broader political, religious, constitutional issues. What should we do to rebuild the country after the civil war?

00:07:40 Speaker_04
What sort of a deal should we do with the king?

00:07:43 Speaker_07
I mean, the army said, look, we're the ones who have fought and suffered. You know, we have to think about the tens of thousands of our colleagues who've fallen and given their lives. They didn't give their lives for a messy compromise.

00:07:58 Speaker_03
At its base in Newmarket, Suffolk, the army kicks its heels out of pocket, simmering with discontent. Dr Anna Kay,

00:08:08 Speaker_05
These people weren't professional soldiers. They were people who were yeomen, or farmers, or weavers, or whatever they were, who had been gathered together.

00:08:16 Speaker_05
So as a consequence, all those hours sitting around the campfires at night, and actually being dislocated from your wife, and your property, and your children, sees the army become very radicalized.

00:08:27 Speaker_03
Plus, there's the army's religious nature. Like Cromwell himself, it's overwhelmingly of the independent persuasion. This does not sit easily with the Presbyterian majority at Westminster.

00:08:41 Speaker_03
In fact, they begin to fear the army as much, maybe even more so, than the old spectre of royalism. Something must be done. But Parliament is a toothless tiger. In May, a law is passed making disbandment official policy. But the Army simply ignores it.

00:09:03 Speaker_03
An exclusion zone is duly imposed. It cannot come within 25 miles of London. But how can they hope to police that? The new model Army is now directly at odds with its own parliamentary masters, and is the latest player in the struggle for power.

00:09:22 Speaker_04
Cromwell, he's torn. He's still sitting as an MP, and we know he was taking his seat in the House of Commons quite regularly in the months after the main civil war ended, but he's second in command of the new model army.

00:09:35 Speaker_04
He has a lot of military sympathies. He has a lot of military friends. And when push comes to shove, when Parliament and the parliamentary army fall out almost completely in May and June, 1647, Cromwell jumps and he supports the New Model Army.

00:09:54 Speaker_04
He quits London and he goes to Newmarket.

00:09:58 Speaker_03
At Holdenby, meanwhile, Charles I is content to sit back and enjoy the show. Amid the splendour of the house and its manicured grounds, he's been furnished with the usual royal trappings. He's even been permitted to retain his personal bodyguard.

00:10:17 Speaker_03
While the political turmoil continues, he can carry on pruning his roses. The longer the country remains ungovernable, the louder will come the calls for his return. Cromwell is not inclined to disagree.

00:10:32 Speaker_03
As contradictory as it may seem, given all that's happened, the King could be the very man to break the current impasse. A good person to get in his pocket. But Cromwell has fought too many battles for diplomatic niceties.

00:10:48 Speaker_03
Rather than enlist the King, he's going to kidnap him. It's dawn, June the 3rd, 1647. At Holdenby, the serenity is broken by the arrival of 500 cavalrymen. At their head is a young sub-lieutenant, a cornet, as the rank is known.

00:11:16 Speaker_03
His name is George Joyce. On seeing him approach, the King's guard takes flight. Joyce, pistol at the ready, climbs the stairs and bursts into the royal bedchamber.

00:11:30 Speaker_03
He is there to save His Majesty, he declares to the startled King, to steal him away from those who would do him harm, to enlist his help in resolving the political crisis.

00:11:41 Speaker_03
He assures the king that if he accompanies him to Newmarket and puts himself in the care of the army, they will guarantee his safety. He will not be forced to do anything against his conscience.

00:11:53 Speaker_03
The king asks, now tell me, Mr. Joyce, where is your commission? meaning his orders. Joyce points down to his men lined up on the terrace outside. There, he says.

00:12:07 Speaker_03
Indeed, says Charles, arching an eyebrow, it is as fair a commission and as well written as I have seen in my life. And so the king is whisked away. This move has not been sanctioned by Commander-in-Chief Sir Thomas Fairfax.

00:12:25 Speaker_03
To him Joyce's actions are worthy of a court-martial. But the move had been given covert blessing by Cromwell. There is no doubt now within the new model army where the true power lies. Cromwell will have Joyce promoted.

00:12:45 Speaker_03
The king is taken ultimately to Hampton Court Palace, his favourite of the royal homes, where he will be kept under an even looser house arrest. The atmosphere at Hampton Court is delightfully convivial.

00:13:01 Speaker_03
Fairfax and Cromwell arrive for discussions with Charles. The men can be seen walking in the garden, laughing and joking. Over coming days, various officers are invited to dine at the royal table.

00:13:14 Speaker_03
Some, like Fairfax, though not Cromwell, even kiss the king's hand. His Majesty reminds them that there is a dukedom up for grabs. The recent death of the Earl of Essex has left a vacancy. It's dangled tantalisingly in front of Cromwell.

00:13:31 Speaker_03
The goodwill is reciprocated. Cromwell, having seen Charles play with his children, declares the King to be the most uprightest and conscientious man of these three kingdoms. The love-in is in full flow.

00:13:46 Speaker_03
It seems that the monarch can soon be reintegrated back into the political structure. And, more immediately, Cromwell's troops can be paid off. But the king is a wily old fox. He's been watching affairs keenly and taking soundings.

00:14:06 Speaker_03
To him, this chaos is not for quelling, but exploiting. particularly given the religious divisions now scarring Parliament. At Westminster it's no longer Puritan versus Anglican, but Puritan versus Puritan.

00:14:23 Speaker_03
There are the Presbyterians who favour a Scottish-style state religion. And then there are those Independents who reject any notion of government interference in worship.

00:14:36 Speaker_04
Having lost the war, the king and his advisors calculate that maybe they can win the peace. And they win the peace by trying to play divide and rule.

00:14:49 Speaker_04
and you've got various groups, the Long Parliament sitting in London, you've got the army units and the army leaders on the English side, but you've also got the Scots.

00:14:58 Speaker_04
So if you could play divide and rule, maybe all those would fall out amongst themselves, would attack each other, and there might be a route whereby the king could regain freedom of manoeuvre and power.

00:15:10 Speaker_04
So the king spends the time saying yes to nothing, saying no to nothing, welcoming all those rival parliamentarian groups to put different settlements to him and spinning out negotiations.

00:15:26 Speaker_03
The situation grows more intractable by the day. The longer the new model army sits idling, the more it's becoming whipped into a revolutionary fervor. Across late 1647 it hosts a series of gatherings.

00:15:40 Speaker_03
They culminate in what are known as the Putney Debates, held at St. Mary's Church on the banks of the Thames. Professor Miholo Csukra,

00:15:50 Speaker_01
And so what we see with the English Civil War in the 1640s is an increased radicalization that the longer the war goes on, the more you see these millennial figures coming to the fore who see this, if you like, as a precursor to the second coming of Christ and setting up a new Jerusalem, a whole series of religious beliefs and understandings.

00:16:15 Speaker_03
A stream of excitable young soldiers is now taking to the pulpit, espousing increasingly extreme views. Most notably, the army is being infiltrated by a revolutionary sect known as the Levelers.

00:16:28 Speaker_03
They believe in universal suffrage and a bottom-up reordering of society. The levelers are the new loud voices calling not for the restoration of a reformed monarchy, but the abolition of it altogether. They demand the establishment of a republic.

00:16:46 Speaker_05
It's a funny thing because things which seem to us utterly obvious as a sort of reasonable and fair and just way of organising things were, to the mid-17th century mind, highly unorthodox and risky and way out, like the idea that you might allow all men to vote.

00:17:01 Speaker_05
No one was suggesting allowing women to vote, which was even more outrageous and radical. So when, in the Putney debates, the discussions stray into those sorts of areas, the army high command close it down because they don't want this to happen.

00:17:12 Speaker_05
Cromwell is not a social radical. He doesn't think there should be a universal voting franchise. but it's the tension of that kind of bubbling world of possibilities within the army.

00:17:22 Speaker_03
The leading lights, Fairfax, Cromwell, and the new rising star, Henry Ireton, must wrest their army back.

00:17:32 Speaker_03
Ireton was a hero of the Battle of Naseby, and he has recently married Cromwell's daughter Bridget, another one to add to the expanding Cromwellian dynasty. These senior officers will be known as the Army Grandees.

00:17:47 Speaker_03
They will call the shots with regard to the future, not just of the Army, but of England.

00:17:54 Speaker_07
Ayrton is his protégé. He comes from a Nottinghamshire gentry family, fairly similar to Cromwell, though in a very curious part of Nottinghamshire in which the eldest son doesn't inherit.

00:18:05 Speaker_07
So he's always the eldest son, he doesn't inherit the property, so he's a jobbing attorney. He joins the army and finds himself in East Anglia and he works with Cromwell in the Isle of Ely.

00:18:15 Speaker_07
And in 1646 he marries Bridget, Cromwell's daughter, and they work very closely together.

00:18:22 Speaker_03
Ayrton has been given permission to present new terms to the King. They seem very generous, surely opening a smooth passage to his return.

00:18:32 Speaker_03
Pardons are offered for the royalist commanders, plus the acceptance of two-year parliaments and a general policy of religious toleration. But, to the exasperation even of his own confidence, the King dismisses them. Professor Clare Jackson,

00:18:51 Speaker_06
One of the things I noticed most from looking at foreign ambassadors, particularly the French, who are very sympathetic to Charles and also have their own interests because Henriette Maria was a French princess.

00:19:00 Speaker_06
But even they become incredibly frustrated when they're in close proximity to Charles, basically saying, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

00:19:09 Speaker_03
Charles is still playing the long game, hopeful of a reset to the old days. And he may be reading the tea leaves correctly. A general mood of discontent is spreading across the country. Pockets of royalist protests are breaking out.

00:19:28 Speaker_03
Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy.

00:19:30 Speaker_02
I mean, one contemporary called Charles I a sweet and gracious prince who knew not how to be or be made great. He is utterly opportunistic. He is fickle. He will wriggle out of things. He is untrustworthy. And why does he behave like that?

00:19:48 Speaker_02
Because he thinks he has the divine right of the kings, that it's not an authority entrusted to him by heaven. In a sense, he is heaven.

00:19:59 Speaker_03
and God's Agent has a trump card to play. During the Civil War Charles saw how the intervention of the Scottish Army had tipped the balance in favour of Parliament. He also noted how the Scots were reluctant to hold him in captivity.

00:20:16 Speaker_03
They are not just a formidable fighting force, but still loyalists at heart. He is, after all, Charles Stuart, King of Scotland, as much as he is, or was, of England.

00:20:29 Speaker_03
Yes, there remains the possibility of raising Royalist troops in Ireland, maybe getting the French on board to fight his cause, but what if he could bring the Scots in again, only this time on his side? Together they could reconquer England,

00:20:46 Speaker_03
The overriding issue for the Scottish government has always been Presbyterianism. What then if he were to promise to install it as the state religion of both kingdoms, Scotland and England, in return for his restoration?

00:21:02 Speaker_03
Secret emissaries are dispatched, back channels are opened to Edinburgh, and music to Charles' ears. The Scots seem amenable.

00:21:14 Speaker_04
The Scots, they'd always been in slightly uneasy alliance with the English and they think the English aren't fulfilling their side of the deal by introducing a Scottish style religion in England and Wales.

00:21:25 Speaker_04
And they begin to think maybe we can cut a better separate deal with the defeated King.

00:21:31 Speaker_03
Forget the old covenant that can be consigned to the dustbin of history. This new agreement will be known as the engagement. The King, the Scots and Presbyterianism in a holy union. Charles will string along Cromwell and Co.

00:21:48 Speaker_03
until the opportune moment, or so he thinks. It's an autumn night in 1647. We're in the Blue Boar Tavern in Holborn, London. In this rowdy pub, the ale flows freely along with the ungodliness.

00:22:10 Speaker_03
In the corner sit two army troopers, sipping at their flagons, minding their own business. They keep a furtive watch on the door. They have a lookout posted outside. A tip-off has come their way.

00:22:25 Speaker_03
At 10pm a dispatch rider is due to arrive at the inn, here to switch horses before he continues his journey down to Dover. And, sewn into the leather of his saddle, will be a top secret communique, something to be smuggled across the channel.

00:22:44 Speaker_03
As the clock ticks round to the appointed hour, they're given the nod. The men abandon their ales and hasten outside, swords at the ready underneath their cloaks. In the yard, a horse clops across the cobbles. Its rider dismounts.

00:23:01 Speaker_03
Handing the reins to a stable boy, he unbuckles his saddle, hauling it off to transfer to a fresh mount. The two men drag him out of sight and pin him against the wall. They slit open the leather and wrench out the letter.

00:23:17 Speaker_03
In the glow of a lamp, they break the seal and read it. It is from His Majesty King Charles I, addressed to his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, currently in France.

00:23:30 Speaker_03
In his delicate, recognisable hand, Charles informs her that both the army and the Presbyterians in Parliament are vying for his affections. But that his best bet for victory lies with the Scots.

00:23:44 Speaker_03
And as for his opposite number, this oafish Oliver Cromwell, he's been forced to deal with. Instead of a silken garter, he writes, his neck should be fitted with a hempen cord. The first man issues a wry chuckle. The second joins in.

00:24:01 Speaker_03
Masquerading as ordinary soldiers, they are none other than Cromwell and Ayrton themselves. As if to compound his complicity, the King then does something quite stupid. On the night of November 11, 1647, he escapes.

00:24:23 Speaker_03
Dressed as a servant, his standard disguise, he sneaks out of Hampton Court. He then makes rendezvous with three mounted accomplices in the woods of Surrey.

00:24:33 Speaker_03
Only instead of heading north to save territory, the king insists they ride down to the south coast, to the Solent. A boat should be waiting. He's going to make a boat for the Isle of Wight.

00:24:47 Speaker_03
From a new offshore base, he will reboot the royalist cause, he declares. But the King is acting on bad intelligence. He presumes that the island's governor, Robert Hammond, will immediately put himself at his disposal.

00:25:03 Speaker_03
In fact, Colonel Hammond is yet another in Cromwell's extended family, related by marriage through a cousin. On crossing the water, Charles is arrested.

00:25:15 Speaker_03
He's carted off to Carisbrook Castle, a maximum security facility, compared with the tame ankle-tagging of Hampton Court. What the hell was he thinking? He was in a position of strength, just a few concessions short of a glorious return.

00:25:33 Speaker_03
Yet now he's a fugitive, and a demonstrably double-crossing one.

00:25:40 Speaker_04
So it was a botched escape. There are two versions of this. Version one is, by late 1647, Charles had pretty well decided that the best chance of regaining power was to come to an agreement with the Scots to launch a second civil war.

00:25:59 Speaker_04
And in order for freedom of maneuver, he knew he had to get away from Parliament's hands. Version two, Cromwell is being duplicitous.

00:26:10 Speaker_04
Cromwell can see that he and his fellow senior officers are losing control of an increasingly fractious New Model Army. So Cromwell sends rumors to Charles, Charles, if you stay at Hampton Court, there are assassination plots, your life is in danger.

00:26:29 Speaker_04
Cromwell deliberately runs down the parliamentarian guards at Hampton Court, enabling Charles to run away. Charles takes the bait and does a botched escape,

00:26:39 Speaker_04
But that's very good because it means he's now a danger so the new model army can pull back together, reunite under its senior commanders such as Fairfax and Cromwell. It played into their hands.

00:26:55 Speaker_04
It ended a period of division and uncertainty for the senior army officers in general. It makes his life much easier. And that's why some historians believe this second rather Machiavellian dubious version of events

00:27:14 Speaker_03
The army is certainly becoming increasingly problematic. Shutting down the Putney debates has not decreased the agitation. Fired up by the Levellers, it's on the verge of open revolt.

00:27:26 Speaker_03
There are rumours of plots by soldiers to arrest or murder its generals. There are colonels talking of impeaching Cromwell himself. Old Knoll, as they've also taken to calling him, has been getting way too cosy with the good-for-nothing King.

00:27:43 Speaker_03
The dissenters have a new slogan, England's Freedom, Soldiers' Rights. Some of them have taken to tucking the manifesto into their hat bands. Cromwell will hear none of it.

00:27:57 Speaker_03
Old Ironsides, Old Knoll, rides out and confronts an army gathering at Ware in Hertfordshire.

00:28:05 Speaker_03
Putting the fear of God into the men, he makes an impassioned speech about duty and honour and tells them to rip up the silly bits of paper poking out of their helmets.

00:28:16 Speaker_03
He then hauls three men out of the line and puts them before an impromptu court-martial. They are summarily condemned to death, but, he says, two of them will be spared. They must each roll dice for their lives.

00:28:33 Speaker_03
It is Private Richard Arnold who is the unlucky low-scorer. He is shot by a firing squad made up of his two reprieved comrades. With order restored, there is work to be done, something they can all bond over.

00:28:54 Speaker_03
In Kent, Cromwell hears, the Navy is mutinied. A squadron of ships has sailed off to the Low Countries. They've offered the King's son, Charles, Prince of Wales, at admiralship.

00:29:08 Speaker_03
Then there's the royalist seizure of the garrison town of Colchester, the taking of Pontefract Castle, and other assorted rebellions. Wales is afflicted by a general uprising all over. And, of course, there are the Scots again.

00:29:25 Speaker_03
On April 20, 1648, Charles's efforts bear fruit. The Scottish Engagers issue a declaration. They are behind the King.

00:29:36 Speaker_06
And this is almost the final straw, particularly for Cromwell.

00:29:40 Speaker_06
After everything that has happened, the fact that Charles is now, as he sees it, trying to vassalise us to a foreign nation is really what convinces Cromwell that he cannot be negotiated with any further.

00:29:55 Speaker_03
Cromwell knows that Charles is pulling the strings from his prison on the Isle of Wight. The King's also been trying to escape again, caught knotting his bedsheets. He and his new model army pledge to sort this matter out themselves.

00:30:09 Speaker_03
Forget parliamentary permission. While Fairfax tackles the uprisings in the South East, Cromwell yumps to Wales. The army grandees, Cromwell in particular, are acting unilaterally, at odds with every legal authority.

00:30:25 Speaker_03
But they're strident in the view that what they're about to do is God's will. And so the new model army gets back to doing what it does best, breaking royalist heads.

00:30:36 Speaker_03
The various uprisings are quashed, including in Wales, culminating in the epic siege of Pembroke. Then, in August, word reaches Cromwell. Up in Scotland, the Duke of Hamilton has raised a 10,000-strong engager army to march on England.

00:30:57 Speaker_03
Old Ironsides goes north. The Second Civil War is a brief, one-sided affair. Almost laughably so. Ever since he and Ayrton seized that secret letter from the King, Cromwell has known what was coming.

00:31:17 Speaker_03
His forces intercept the Scots as they pass down through the English North West. The Battle of Preston takes place across three days in the lanes and hedgerows of Lancashire. The New Model Army makes swift work of the enemy.

00:31:33 Speaker_03
Against 2,000 Scottish dead, 9,000 wounded and captured, the New Model Army loses, if the reports are to be believed, just a hundred men. The Royalist military threat is crushed.

00:31:50 Speaker_03
Cromwell is not the only voice now demanding an end to negotiations with this dishonourable king. He had his chance and he blew it. Charles is, as the army damn him, a man of blood. His mere existence is enough to maintain a threat of royalism.

00:32:06 Speaker_03
At the very least, he must abdicate. But abdication, exile or having a younger son govern under a regent, that still leaves Charles Stuart as a symbol. He'll be a figurehead for opposition as long as he lives and breathes.

00:32:23 Speaker_03
Parliament hopes, naively, that his sainted majesty will come to his regal senses. Yet more peace talks are held. But Cromwell puts his foot down. Enough is enough. The only way to resolve matters is to get rid of these appeasers in Parliament.

00:32:41 Speaker_03
To root them all out. There are already troops in London. Under Ayrton, a restless army is now camped out in the woodlands of Hyde Park. They are there as much to concentrate minds as to maintain public order.

00:33:02 Speaker_03
On December 6, 1648, at seven in the morning, a detachment of soldiers is dispatched to Westminster ahead of the day's parliamentary session. They are led by Colonel Thomas Pride, a veteran of Naseby and Preston.

00:33:17 Speaker_03
Pride enters the Commons and forcibly prevents, at the barrel of a musket, all opposition MPs, anyone not in sync with the New Model Army's grandees, from entering the chamber.

00:33:30 Speaker_04
So Prides purge, they purge the Parliament, they turn back, in some cases arrest, large numbers of MPs and other MPs seeing this don't even try and take their seat, they voluntarily stay away.

00:33:45 Speaker_04
So they purge the House of Commons and in the end, or as a wake of this, probably only 70 or so MPs are willing and able to take their seat and they're the hard men, the radical men, the men who support the army and the army agenda.

00:34:02 Speaker_03
The remaining thinned-out pro-independent chamber will be known as the Rump Parliament. Whether Ayrton acts unilaterally or at Cromwell's behest is debated by historians. Cromwell is still in Yorkshire when Colonel Pride makes his move.

00:34:18 Speaker_03
But he arrives himself just hours later, hot-footing it down from the north, and quickly takes ownership of the situation.

00:34:26 Speaker_06
By the late 1640s, the army does seem to have this sort of semi-autonomous power base. It is very concerned about its own mounting power arrears. It's very concerned about becoming a scapegoat in any settlement eventually negotiated.

00:34:40 Speaker_06
So the coup, that's what it is really that is prized purge in December 1648, shows the very real depths of divisions.

00:34:48 Speaker_03
The Rump Parliament is steered by Cromwell now. It declares itself the supreme authority in the land, the only one vested with the right to pass laws. And it will do so without the consent of the House of Lords or the King.

00:35:04 Speaker_03
By now Fairfax is the military leader in name only. All authority has been long since surrendered to his number two. Oliver Cromwell has the army at his back, and an executive of Yes Men running the country. He is now the most powerful man in England.

00:35:23 Speaker_03
And his new personal assembly votes to do something that no country has ever done. On December the 28th, the Speaker of the House reads out an ordinance. The Rump Parliament has instituted a special High Court of Justice.

00:35:39 Speaker_03
It is going to put the King on trial for high treason.

00:35:49 Speaker_04
OK, why do some parliamentarians, why do some members of the New Model Army, including the senior officers, decide to get rid of the king? What's the tipping point? Well, there are two grounds.

00:36:05 Speaker_04
First, most obviously, the king shows himself to have been insincere in open negotiations. He's launched a new civil war in 1648. He's almost an anti-king, so secular grounds. But there's also a religious argument.

00:36:21 Speaker_04
Right at the end of April and beginning of May 1648, large numbers of new model army officers, almost certainly including Cromwell, gathered for an intense three-day prayer meeting at Windsor Castle. and they were seeking God's guidance.

00:36:36 Speaker_04
Why, God, do you seem to have deserted us? Why have you plunged us into a renewed civil war? And they can't understand this. What have they done? And then one of the officers has a revelation from God. He receives God's message.

00:36:51 Speaker_04
God's message is, while you opposed the king on the battlefield, I supported you. I gave you victory at Marston Moor and Naseby.

00:37:00 Speaker_04
However, when you then try to do a deal with the king, everything went wrong and you've been divided and I've turned against you. So a second line is, it's God's will.

00:37:16 Speaker_06
There is a quick realisation after Parliament's victory in the Second Civil War that further negotiation with Charles is pointless. that he cannot be trusted. It's not clear that that necessarily means regicide.

00:37:32 Speaker_06
It could have been a trial for treason that would result in some kind of outcome, perhaps abdication in favor of his sons. Cromwell himself, it appears, eventually came to sort of support regicide as an inescapable necessity.

00:37:46 Speaker_02
In other words, as long as Charles is alive, you will always have war. What they don't realize, of course, is that you always have war, even when he's dead, because he has a son and a younger son and so forth.

00:38:02 Speaker_02
And of course, the youngest son becomes King James II, whose life is not entirely without incident either.

00:38:14 Speaker_03
It's the morning of Saturday, January the 20th, 1649. We're at Westminster Hall. The old Norman building with its hundred foot ceiling is the largest indoor space in England. Where better to host a show trial?

00:38:32 Speaker_03
The hall has been turned into a stage set, a makeshift courtroom bedecked with captured Royalist battle flags. The benches arranged with Puritans in their black coats, white collars and buckled hats.

00:38:46 Speaker_03
In the balcony the public wear more colour, a sign of at least some Royal support. The nervous chatter abates when a buzz goes around that the King is on his way. At the far end, Cromwell and the judges watch Charles arrive.

00:39:03 Speaker_03
He's surrounded by guards, but he exudes a regal calm, slowly climbing out of his sedan chair.

00:39:11 Speaker_05
They all rush to the window and see this little figure. It's January, it's very cold, everything's frozen. Charles I, very small, it's a cloaked figure walking across the lawns. And Cromwell turns to the group and says, what have we done?

00:39:26 Speaker_05
And just for a few minutes, sort of hangs in the air. And then he kind of recovers himself and says, no, this is great work. We're here and we must do it.

00:39:35 Speaker_03
Cromwell whispers to Judge John Bradshaw, who then addresses the court. My masters, he is come, he is come. An air of the surreal hangs above proceedings.

00:39:49 Speaker_03
Judge Bradshaw, fearing assassination, is wearing an oversized bulletproof hat that comes down over his ears. Its fur is lined with iron plate.

00:40:00 Speaker_06
It takes Parliament some time to find a judge who's willing to preside, and it is unprecedented. I mean, the idea of putting a divinely ordained, anointed king on trial, charging spectators money to attend this trial.

00:40:14 Speaker_03
At least Bradshaw has showed up. Of the 135 commissioners or judges selected, only 68 hardlines, handpicked by the army, have turned out. The others have stayed away in fear for their safety. When Charles enters the hall, there is a hush.

00:40:34 Speaker_03
He surveys the room with disdain as much as curiosity. There are sporadic shouts from the gallery of God save the King. His Majesty appears completely unruffled. He's dressed in fine black velvet.

00:40:48 Speaker_03
The Order of the Garter hangs on a bright blue ribbon around his neck. No one seems quite sure what to do. The king is ushered into the dock. A clerk reads out the names of those assembled. A taking of the class register.

00:41:05 Speaker_03
The empty seats include the ones set aside for Fairfax. As the official war leader, he of all people should have been present. A voice rings out from above. He has more wit than to be here. It's Fairfax's wife. There's a stunned silence.

00:41:25 Speaker_03
Then Bradshaw begins a long rambling speech about how the court is acting on behalf of God, justice, the house of commons, and therefore the people. But this is effectively a kangaroo court. And now it seems not even a quarate one.

00:41:43 Speaker_02
Oh yeah, the whole thing was to call it a court in any sense is a joke.

00:41:51 Speaker_03
The dice are loaded and the king knows it. The floor is thrown open to John Cook, the Solicitor General and Chief Prosecutor. The King leans over and taps Cook on the shoulder with his cane, asking if he might be allowed to speak. Cook ignores him.

00:42:14 Speaker_03
As the King goes for a second attempt, the silver top pops off the stick and hits the floor with a loud crack, causing everyone to flinch and Bradshaw to grasp his hat. As the silver bauble rolls across the stone flags, nobody moves a muscle.

00:42:32 Speaker_03
The king must stoop to pick it up himself. In an age of subservience and obsequiousness, such a thing is unheard of. But Charles has a clear strategy, a game plan. He will show up to his mind what a spiteful and unlawful piece of theatre this all is.

00:42:55 Speaker_03
Chief Prosecutor Cook continues. He condemns the King as, quote, a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable enemy of the Commonwealth of England. Charles merely issues a haughty laugh.

00:43:10 Speaker_03
When asked how he pleads, innocent or guilty, his response is exactly as Cromwell had predicted before the trial began. He questions the very validity of his arraignment. for once the King's trademark stemmer leaves him.

00:43:26 Speaker_03
There are many unlawful authorities in this world, thieves and robbers by the highway, but I would know by what lawful authority I was brought here. It's not just the court, but the charge. Treason in legal terms means an act against the crown.

00:43:44 Speaker_03
How can a sovereign be treasonous against himself? In any case, he is above the law. The king repeats his defense. Show me by what authority I am seated here and I will answer it.

00:43:59 Speaker_04
I mean, the constitution is being subverted. There's no legal way that the army could purge Parliament.

00:44:07 Speaker_04
The Lords who are still sitting, they want no part in setting up the trial and execution of the King, so the House of Lords is abolished a few weeks later. All this is unconstitutional, unlawful.

00:44:19 Speaker_04
Is there any way that a reigning monarch, a divinely appointed monarch, could be charged with treason. As Charles had first pointed out at his trial, you know, show me the law. He wouldn't recognise the court, he wouldn't enter a plea.

00:44:32 Speaker_04
Show me the legal justification for this court and then I'll enter a plea and of course they couldn't do that.

00:44:41 Speaker_03
Proceedings are adjourned and Charles is led away. Further cries of God save the King and Your Majesty ring out from the public seats. Charles' calm and consistent rebuttals will continue to flummox Bradshaw, who ends up frequently shouting over him.

00:45:00 Speaker_03
But the King knows where all of this is heading. On day three, the court moves the goalposts. It decrees that the King, through his refusal to play ball, is in contempt of court. It means he can be tried in absentia.

00:45:18 Speaker_03
The trial shifts to the smaller room next door, known as the Painted Chamber. In there, in private, one by one, a stream of prosecution witnesses confirm that the King had willfully declared war on the English people.

00:45:34 Speaker_03
While the case against him mounts, the King is permitted no legal representative, no defence. The members of the court are judge, jury, and ultimately, executioner.

00:45:47 Speaker_03
they reach their verdict on day five, that the King is guilty of all he has been charged with. In the ultimate showdown between King and Cromwell, there is finally a winner.

00:46:06 Speaker_02
So you have two men who had religiously augmented delusion about the nature of their power, and those delusions were bound to clash and bound to end in the death of one of them.

00:46:20 Speaker_02
Charles had run into the gap, thinking that he could carry it off this time. It was a huge gamble, of course, and it failed, and it ended up on the scaffold,

00:46:33 Speaker_03
Cromwell drafts a death warrant. He is the third person to add his signature after Bradshaw and Lord Grey. He's in a jovial mood. Backstage, the commissioners sit around a table, contemplating the enormity of their task.

00:46:49 Speaker_03
Cromwell flicks ink palettes at them, pulling faces. But the liberty is short-lived. Yet more judges have done a runner. Only 46 of the 135 members sign. This leaves them short of the required majority.

00:47:07 Speaker_02
But even then, even at the point of Charles's trial, there are many who don't want him executed. Famously, of course, Sir Thomas Fairfax, who was the general-in-chief. Cromwell was actually, at this time, his subordinate.

00:47:21 Speaker_02
would not sign the death warrant for Chancellor First.

00:47:27 Speaker_03
So Cromwell turns to political thumbscrews. Eventually, 59 names are put to the document, some under extreme coercion. Sir Richard Inglesby reportedly is dragged across the room by Cromwell personally before the quill is manipulated in his hand.

00:47:47 Speaker_03
It is not a majority as they had originally defined, but a majority of those who turned up. And so, the death sentence is sneaked across the line. On January the 27th, the court moves back into public session for the pronouncement.

00:48:05 Speaker_03
Westminster Hall falls silent as Bradshaw declares that the King has been convicted of treason and other high crimes exhibited against him by the people of England. A woman's voice rings out, it's a lie.

00:48:20 Speaker_03
It's Lady Fairfax again, only this time in disguise. In the chaos, roundhead troops threaten the crowd. Asked to respond, for the first time Charles's voice cracks. Do not forget that I am your sovereign king ordained by God to rule his people.

00:48:41 Speaker_03
By that authority I stand more for the liberty of my people than any that come here to be my pretended judges. You have shown no lawful authority to satisfy any reasonable man.

00:48:55 Speaker_03
He backpedals now, offering to submit himself to a court of the whole of Parliament. He knows that it will include the Lords and enough common sympathisers to save his neck. But it's too late.

00:49:08 Speaker_03
He's informed that he will be put to death by the severing of his head from his body. Silenced by Bradshaw, Charles is led away. His final words are a desperate plea. Will you not hear a word, sir? The king is moved back to St. James's palace.

00:49:31 Speaker_03
His captors thought that if he stayed at Whitehall the sound of the scaffold being hammered together would keep him awake.

00:49:37 Speaker_03
He spends the next three days in prayer and writing letters to his family, including his teenage sons in exile, Charles and James. Shortly, technically, Charles Jr. will accede to the throne as Charles II, his lawful heir.

00:49:56 Speaker_03
Barely sleeping the night before his execution, the King is up before sunrise, declaring, I have much work to do today. That morning, January the 30th at 10 a.m., there was a knock on his door, the sign for him to be led through St.

00:50:13 Speaker_03
James's Park back to Whitehall.

00:50:17 Speaker_02
The officers who were to escort the king to the scaffold, there had to be a bit of paperwork. They had to be given written orders to take him and sign those orders, and they refused. They just couldn't do it.

00:50:31 Speaker_02
And so finally, Cromwell signed the paper and another officer signed. So it shows how even at the moment of execution, there's a huge amount of trepidation of self-loathing, if you like,

00:50:48 Speaker_03
That freezing January morning, the blade falls hard. The King's corpse twitches as a four-foot jet of blood squirts over those in the front row. A little party trick that the executioners always enjoy.

00:51:04 Speaker_03
One observer writes, a groan went up as never I've heard before and hope never to hear again. According to legend, the axeman hoists the decapitated head and shows it to the crowd, yelling, behold, the head of a traitor.

00:51:23 Speaker_03
More likely he says nothing, the better not to betray his identity. Other reports claim that he tosses the king's head into the multitude so that his followers might dip their handkerchiefs in his blood.

00:51:37 Speaker_03
What is fact is that the cry of horror turns to stunned silence. As a crack of thunder reverberates across the slate-gray sky, God's vengeance would seem close at hand.

00:51:54 Speaker_03
England, after a thousand years of history, and by the hand of Oliver Cromwell, has taken a leap into the unknown. In the next episode... Outrage of the King's execution leads Cromwell to wage war on Scotland and, notoriously, Ireland.

00:52:25 Speaker_03
Insurgency's over, he will become Lord Protector of a united Commonwealth. King in all but name. But as discontent continues to spread, the unthinkable will once again become possible. The monarchy couldn't be restored, could it?

00:52:44 Speaker_03
That's next time, in the final part of the Cromwell story.