was a momentous period. The New Model Army had called the King to account. Despairing of a peaceful settlement, they had brought him to trial at Westminster. So it was in the dead of that freezing winter, at the end of January, that she left her sons in the care of a friendly woman she had come to know on a farm locally. She considered taking them to London with her, so they could participate in the historic event, but she thought them too young so she went alone.
Juliana Lovell took a boat from Greenwich, travelled upriver and joined the crowds outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall on the 30th of January. There she watched the public execution of King Charles.
Chapter Fifty-Five — Westminster: January 1649
It came as a surprise to Gideon that when, back in London, he offered his services again to the Trained Bands' Green Regiment, they failed to welcome him with rapture. 'You can't just turn up! We are not a dump for cast-off New Modellers.'
'I am experienced.'
'And infected with fantastical, wild ideas, no doubt. All our officers are Presbyterians now. We don't have room for Baptists and Levellers and anti-monarchist firebrands with their bowels all on fire for giving potboys the vote.'
'I can use a snaphance musket.'
'Use it to shoot ducks then.'
'Is Colonel Warner still in charge?'
'No, he died in the summer.'
While Gideon was away, his old colonel, Sir John Warner, had been elected Lord Mayor of London. His obituaries took up almost as much newsprint as those for Thomas Rainborough, and in the conservative press more. Warner had been Lord Mayor during a contentious period. His predecessor, Sir John Gayre, had colluded with the Royalist rebels in Kent — to the extent that he was indicted for high treason. However, Warner was a puritanical Independent, who would be remembered longest for having abolished the traditional satirical puppets at Bartholomew's Fair. After he died, every puppeteer that August had a puppet playing Warner, making him a fool.
'Here lies my lord Mayor, under this stone,
That last Bartholomew's Fair, no puppets would own,
But next Bartholomew's Fair, who liveth to see,
Shall view my lord Mayor, a puppet to be!'
Reforms that would give the puppets much more to squeak about were coming to a head, and Gideon would find work. By remaining in London he witnessed December's and January's astonishing events.
Only three weeks after Rainborough's funeral, the move to bring the King to trial began. Up until then, peace negotiations had continued. Presbyterians, who still dominated Parliament, sent commissioners to the Isle of Wight, to speak to the King directly. He misinterpreted their eagerness to reach a settlement, which was really born out of deep fear of the radical republicans. The King took it for weakness, not grasping that even the Presbyterians now thought he was hopeless to deal with.
It was seven years since the war began, and one draft treaty after another had come to nothing. It was three and a half years since Naseby, after which the New Model Army thought there should be no further argument. Now, Henry Ireton was put in charge of steering their proposals with an iron hand. On behalf of the army Ireton drew up a remonstrance which demanded abandoning negotiations, dissolving the Long Parliament which had been sitting for almost a decade, reforming the franchise and putting the King to trial on a charge of high treason.
This was unacceptable to Parliament. Parliament, as it was then constituted, therefore had to go. A secret committee — three MPs and three senior army officers — gathered in a private room. They looked at the members, name by name, marking those who 'had continued faithfully to the public interest'. This meant specifically those who supported Ireton's latest remonstrance.
Next day, Colonel Pride's regiment appeared in Westminster and the rest, over 140 Members, were forcibly debarred from the House of Commons. Forty-one were taken prisoner and locked in an alehouse overnight — the alehouse adjoining Westminster Hall, which was ironically nicknamed 'Hell'. The eldest were offered parole, with permission to sleep at their own homes, but they refused, because they would not recognise the authority by which they were apprehended.
After Pride's Purge the tiny remainder came to be known derisively as the Rump Parliament ('full of maggots' jeered their enemies). These men put in hand the King's trial. Few were dedicated republicans, in fact, but they distrusted Charles and were exasperated by years of failing to reach a compromise. Even those who believed in monarchy as a principle were now prepared to remove the current office-holder.
The New Model Army transferred the King from Carisbrooke to the nearby mainland, a grim prison at Hurst Castle, cut off on all sides by sea except for a narrow pebbled causeway. In that cold bastion, the trappings of sovereignty were stripped from him. He lived in a dark cell where candles were needed even in daylight. It was said that only one servant was allowed him, though the House of Commons formally approved a daily allowance of ten pounds for his maintenance — ten pounds, when an infantry soldier was paid only eight pence a day. Charles also had a specified list of servants that started with two personal attendants and ran into: a carver, a cupbearer, a sewer, a master of the robes, a page of the back stairs, a paymaster, servants of the wood-yard, of the cellar and buttery, of the pantry and ewry, a page of the Presence, a groom of the chamber, a master cook and two undercooks. He was allowed to keep two pet dogs.
Those who had seen him reported that he was careless of dress and had let his hair grow long. It was all grey and his features had sunk, with pouchy eyes in a haggard face. At heart, he knew his fate. He spoke of it like a tragedian to any supporters who managed to visit him; he was gratified by their tears.
When the drastically reduced Parliament began setting up a High Court of Justice, the House of Lords refused to co-operate. The House of Commons pressed on, establishing the principle that the subjects of England had the right to pass judgment on their King: 'the Commons of England in Parliament assembled do declare that the people are, under God, the original of all just power'. Directly opposite to the Stuarts' belief in the Divine Right of Kings, this was the heart of why the civil war had been fought.
The trial was proclaimed by a sergeant at arms, who rode into Westminster Hall with the House of Commons mace upon his shoulder, attended by various officers and six trumpeters on horseback, while a guard of horse and foot beat up drums in New Palace Yard. The proclamation was made, then repeated later. Gideon heard it in Cheapside, Lambert at the Old Exchange. Orders were given for the practical management of the trial: provision of rooms and necessaries for the King, a house for the lord president of the court, the supply of guards for the court, for the King's person, for all routes through which the King must pass, with extra guards on the roof and outside windows, security barriers to prevent crowd movements or rescue of the prisoner, even the blocking-up of tavern back doors which could give access to troublemakers.
No king of England had been tried for misdemeanours. There was no precedent; the very form of the court had to be worked out. Assassination, the tool of choice in previous history, was not to be allowed. There had to be a formal punishment for the kingdom's bloodshed. Retribution must be seen to occur. And although English subjects had no bill of rights, those who were struggling towards reform wanted to demonstrate that they made themselves subjects by an implied contract, a contract where they had an expectation of good government from their monarchs.
Appointed to the court as judges were 135 commissioners. Many found themselves suddenly unavailable for this privilege. More than half refused to appear, either doubting the legality of proceedings or terrified of the danger. Lord Fairfax, whose political opinions had always been kept very strictly private, excused himself. Others believed it their duty to God and the country to take part. A little-known judge agreed to preside: John Bradshaw, who had begun his career as an attorney's clerk at Congleton and progressed to Chief Justice of Chester; until then, he was unheard of outside Cheshire, which was viewed as a remote wilderness next to Wales. Even Bradshaw felt so petrified of being murdered for what he was doing, that he commissioned an armour-plated hat, which he clapped on for the trial's duration.
Now the King was brought closer to London, to Windsor Castle. He was in the custody of the Fifth-Monarchist
