Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve the English Civil War Part three. The Army was now in control, and it began to take stock of its power and its position. This was the period in which Oliver Cromwell openly broke with the King and spoke bitterly against him in the Army Council. On January the third, sixteen forty eight, the House of Commons passed the vote of no Address by a majority of fifty. It was agreed by this that no more communications or proposals could be put to the King.
Cromwell fully supported the decision on the grounds that the people should quote not any law longer expect safety and government from an obstinate man whose heart God has hardened. The Council of the Army also pronounced that it would stand by the Kingdom and the Parliament without the King and against him were inching ever closer to the end. Now, of course, the King's incarceration for truly incarcerated. Now he was incensed all those who supported the Royalists. Riots occurred
in old Royalist cities like Ipswich and Canterbury. At the beginning of April, the Lord Mayor of London sent several trained bands to disburse a crowd of apprentices and moors. Failed. The crowd turned on the bands, captured their weapons and marched off, shouting on behalf of King Charles. Petitioners seeking the rule of a king again flocked into London from Kent,
Essex and Surrey. The cavaliers were jubilant for the moment, and Presbyterians once more quickly gained a hole over Parliament, and so in April the Commons now reversed course and passed a new motion calling for a treaty with the King. The signs of civil war were now once more apparent. The first acts came from Wales, where in April a Royalist commander occupied near be Tenby Castle, and soon the
whole of South Wales declared itself in Charles's favor. The Army Council then ordered Cromwell to enter South Wales with two regiments of cavalry and three of infantry. It took
him six weeks, but Cromwell decisively crushed the rebels. Other anti parliamentary forces had emerged throughout the country, guided not really by zeal for the King, as dismayed by the constant taxes that the parliamentarians were now raising, and the county committees imposed by Parliament Berrick and Carlisle were taken by the disaffected. Several received in a surprise attack. Scarborough declared for the King this represented a serious challenge now
to the authority of Parliament. But this and now we really are in a second Civil War, as it became known, ded once more in victory for the New Model Army. This time the Scottish Army did not cross the border until July, by which time most of the risings in England and Wales had been put down by the army's superior military force. Cromwell dealt with the North and Fairfax the south. It had not really been a war, but
a series of scattered risings and outbreaks of violence. There was never really a serious attempt to coordinate what could have actually been a successful rebellion. Still without any coherent strategy, these new Royalist rebels were simply no match for the New Model Army. They had waited vainly, it seemed, for the Scots until it became too late. The Second Civil
War had a bloody ending on two principal fronts. The Scottish Army, under the command of the Duke of Hamilton made a slow progress southward through the rain and wind of an unseasonably cold summer. Ill trained and much smaller than the force was expected, It's sustained by no great cause, and as a consequence, at extremely low morale. The New Model Army was at least bolstered by the knowledge that
it was fighting a foreign invader. The two sides encountered each other on a pitch battle near the walls of Preston on the seventeenth of August sixteen forty eight, in which the infantry of both sides pressed hard against each other, but the Scots were eventually pushed back by the superior discipline of the New Model Army and lost about a thousand men. Cromwell pursued the remainder of the Scottish Army, which battered and broken laid down its arms. It was
the first victory in which he enjoyed overall command. All the remaining loyalists from the southeast had fled behind the walls of Colchester, where in the middle of June Sir
Thomas Fairfax prepared for a long siege against them. It was the most inglorious event of the entire Civil War, as actually five or six historians who write that sentence, Fairfax had decided to starve the city into submission until there came a time when the inhabitants, having exhausted the provision of cats and dogs, were forced to devour soap and candles. It was reported that the Royalist soldiers had
told the inhabitants to eat their children. The Royalist commander, the Earl of Norwich, then sent five hundred women and children out of town. Fairfax refused to receive them, and with threats, they were driven back behind the walls. By the end of August, Reduced, as it was said by Captain Storm without and by Captain Hunger within, the Royalists surrendered. Two of their commanders were then put in front of a firing squad. This second phase of the Civil War
was more harsh and intense by the first. No longer did anybody care about the ideals of mercy. But the Battle of Preston effectively marked the end of the Second Civil War and of the turmoil that had just frankly mangled the kingdom since the king had first raised that manner almost six years ago. It was calculated that about one hundred thousand soldiers and civilians died in the course of the conflict, and that by simple proportion a larger share of the pow population died that in the Great
First World War of nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen. It has therefore justly been described as the bloodiest war in England's history. One hundred and fifty towns, fifty villages all suffered significant advantages. Ten thousand houses were utterly destroyed, and the question on everybody's mind was a courus for what. Throughout the course of this Second Civil War, Charles made several attempts to escape from where he was being held,
wh was Carlsbroke Castle. He never stopped conspiring, he never stopped trying to devise some means of turning his enemies against one another and somehow emerging from this victorious I think maybe if he would turn those same attentions towards pragmatic conciliation at the start of this whole thing, he wouldn't have been cooped up in carlsbrook Castle. Still, the majority of the members of the Houses of Lords and Commons, and of course, together with a large part of the population,
simply wanted peace and peace at any price. The King was therefore taken out of confinement in the castle and put up with his friends and servants in Newport, to which town the parliamentary commissioners then came. He actually was put under a canopy of state with his advisors behind him, and the parliamentarians came to see him as though he
was still the all powerful King of England. At this point, Charles was in a mood to make a deal, no doubt, because the victory of the New Model Army had effectively brought an end to any resistance that he might mount. He wished to come to an agreement with Parliament on the good grounds and the reality that he simply was more afraid at this point of the army than he was of the parliamentarians. So within a few days he began to concede proposal after proposal, and in return was
granted a couple of his own. He submitted in a large part to the religious demands that the commissioners were making, and he agreed to give up control of all of the military for a period of two decades. The parliamentary negotiators were, of course, no doubt, aware that he could renege on these promises whenever he wanted to, but they, like the King, had now come to fear the new model Army more than anything else, and that was the problem.
Now the army was growing increasingly impatient with the negotiations at Newport, and so in November they drew up what they called a remonstrance calling for exemplary justice for Charles. The leaders of the army had now begun openly advocating for the death of the king. They had also begun the march back to London after completing their business against
the Scots in the North. Now, on the first day of December, the King was removed from the Isle of Wight and taken to Hurst Cancel on the coast of Hampshire. At this point he must have guessed, or maybe even known, that all hope was over. The army was now the effective master of the Kingdom, and almost surely now was going to seek his death. Yet, like Oliver Cromwell, to a large extent, he continued to believe that he had
a destiny, a sense of higher purpose. He believed now that he could, if nothing else, become a martyr to his cause, and he still believed that this was very much a religious cause for him. He was, after all, God's anointed. On the nineteenth of December, Charles began the journey from Hurst Castle to Windsor, where by order of the army officers, he was to be quote secured in order to bring of him speedily to justice end quote. Yet the nature of what that justice was remained unclear.
Many in the army didn't wish for Charles to be sentenced to death, despite his fierce words about this man of blood, this King of England. To this Charles. Oliver Cromwell seems to have bonne among those who actually didn't favor the death penalty. Charles might now have been so chastened and so desperate that he would yield to whatever
the army He said. There was no reason to put him to death the army and I don't know, maybe a newly elected Parliament would therefore acquire legitimacy and authority if they held both with the agreement of appliant King. In the event that he was tried and found guilty, he could simply be deposed rather than executed. Charles's death at this point was by no means not a necessity,
and there was another consideration that continued to bother. Oliver Cromwell. However, an envoy had been sent to Ireland by the King with the goal of raising an army. If Charles could be dissuaded from following through with that, then perhaps that
threat would be eliminated. The prospect of a royalist Ireland was enough to persuade Oliver Cromwell to make at least one last effort to talk to Charles to see if he could bring them around, and so the army leaders then sent an envoy to Windsor in order to discuss the terms of a possible agreement, but the King refused to see him on the ground that he had already quote conceded too much and even so had failed to give satisfaction, and he was resolved to die rather than
lay any further burden on his conscience end quote. Unfortunately, this last period of obstinacy, if that's what it was, this may have been a genuine feeling, of course on the part of Charles, But the fact of the matter is is the refusal of King Charles to make any further compromises persuaded Oliver Cromwell that there was no other option.
Charles had to be tried and he had to be executed, and so on New Year's Day sixteen forty nine, the rump Parliament passed without any opposition an ordinance for the King's trial, on the grounds that he had contrived quote a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and quote they argued that he had tried to make himself a tyrant, that it was he who had prosecuted this bloody civil war
for his own purposes. The Lords rejected the ordinance, however, whereupon the Commons simply passed a resolution that the people are under God, the original and all just power, and that the Commons represents the people. The Commons therefore declared themselves to be the supreme power in the state, effectively overriding the House of Lords veto and moving forward with the trial. Charles was to be brought from Windsor to
Saint James's Palace on the nineteenth of genuine wary. The King was conducted into Westminster Hall and sat down in the place provided without the least sign of unease at all. All the judges, according to one scribe, were quote fixing their eyes upon him, without the least show of respect end quote. The Solicitor General then read out the charges. Charles actually attempted to stop him, tapping him on the
shoulder and saying, hold a little. He tapped him with a silver tipped cane, but the official didn't pay any attention. He tapped him twice more, and when the silver tip accidentally came off and rolled across the floor, no one picked it up. In fact, a few days later, Charles reflected that this was an omen. It was an omen of his beheading. It was as though the tip of the cane was his very head rolling across the scaffold. When the same official later called him a tyrant and trader,
Charles laughed aloud. He would argue consistently this was illegally possibility. A sovereign can't be accused of treason because the meaning of treason was to commit a crime against the sovereign. Charles had committed no crime against himself. Therefore, how could he be guilty of treason? He didn't understand that the word now denoted a trespass not against a sovereign in terms of a king, but against the new meaning, the sovereign power of the country and the sovereign power of
the country had become Parliament, not Charles. The king's state, preserved in all honor and authority, had now actually just been turned into the state sans king. After all these recitals, the President of the Court asked for an answer to the impeachment against him. Charles responded, quote, I would know by what power I am called hither end quote. This was of course the biggest question, and he added that, quote there are many lawful authorities in the world. There
are robbers and highwaymen end quote. He was questioning the legitimacy of the court. We've seen this time and time again. We saw it with the death of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scott's We've seen it over and over again, and we're going to continue to see it actually throughout the tumultuous eighteenth century and beyond that. Oftentimes, monarchs, when they're called to task, simply respond by calling into question the tribunal or whatever the proceedings are. So this isn't anything new.
Charles is just pulling from an old playbook here. Now in this instance, the men at the bench had an answer. He was told that he had been brought to trial in the name of the people of England in which he was and here's the keyword, elected king and from that point he would have to answer. Now. Of course, Charles responded very quickly to this, stating England was never an elected kingdom, but an hereditary kingdom for near these thousand years. To an extent. That's true. To an extent.
That's a little bit of a misleading statement, but you get the point. This dialogue, this back and forth continued a little bit longer until the parliamentarian simply adjourned the proceedings. As the King passed the great sort of justice on the clerk's table, he was heard to say, quote, I have no fear of that he'd be tested very soon. On the second day of the trial, the King once more refused to plead guilty or not guilty. He said he didn't recognize the authority of the court, and so
he was ordered to be taken away. As he attempted to leave, he said, I do require to give my reasons, but was told sir, tis not for prisoners to require. This made Charles Goe positively apoplectic, and he called out, sir, I am not an ordinary prisoner, which is of course true, but these are not ordinary times. On the third day, Charles was asked again to plead, and again he refused. He said, now it was he, not Parliament, who was
standing up for the liberties of the kingdom. In fact, he was asked to plead forty three times altogether, but he would not because he did not accept the authority of Parliament over him. On the twenty seventh of January, the judges, sitting in the Painted Chamber at Westminster declared that the King was a quote traitor, tyrant, murderer and public enemy who deserves death by the severing of his
head from his body end quote. Before the sentence was passed upon him in court, Charles argued that the case was so serious that it had to be put before a joint session of Parliament. Remember the lords weren't there. Some of the judges, anxious to be relieved of the responsibility of regicide, favored the idea. However, this was when Oliver Cromwell, who had been watching the whole proceedings, spoke up, shouting out, art thou mad, canst thou not sit still
and be quiet? The King's proposal was not accepted. After the sentence of death was read out. Charles asked permission to speak, but was told no, he would have to leave. He tried anyway, He said, I may speak after the sentence by your favors, or I may speak after the sentence. Ever, but at this point he was grabbed rather roughly and held away as he was pulled out of the room,
repeatedly screaming justice, Justice, Justice. Now, of course, in reality, the trial and death of King Charles were contrived by a small, if committed minority who in no way represented the wishes of the nation. In fact, there were some foreign ambassaries present to just Dutch ambassadors, for example, who pleaded for his life. Sir Thomas Fairfax made a similar
supplication to the Councilor of the Army. The Prince of Wales sent a blank sheet of paper, signed and sealed, so that the Parliament could simply write down whatever conditions it wanted. He would agree to them to save his father, But the pleas were not enough. Cromwell was absolutely convinced at this point that the king had to die, otherwise there would simply be no safety for themselves or for this new Commonwealth. And Cromwell, at this point in the
Army were completely driving the boat. The last days of the King of England, for those around him, were sorrowful. On the twenty ninth of January, Charles burned his papers and ciphered correspondents. Two of his younger children, Elizabeth and Henry, still in the hands of his enemies, were permitted to visit him. When they caught sight of their father, they
both burst into tears. He told his thirteen year old daughter that he was about to die a glorious death for the liberty of the land and for the maintenance of the true religion. He told his ten year old son that the boy must not permit the army to place a crown on his head. Well his older brothers were still alive. The brother replied, quote, I would sooner
be torn to pieces first. The guards reportedly wept. On the last night of his life, which was January the twenty ninth, sixteen forty nine, the king reportedly slept soundly for about four hours. When he awoke, he told his personal servant that, quote, this is my second marriage day. He asked for two shirts because he didn't want his enemies to think that he was shaking for fear when
he was cold. When he left Saint James Pallace. Several companies of infantry were waiting to escort him to White Home. The noise of their drums was so loud that anything that the King said could not be heard. He was taken to his bed Tramber, where he waited until Parliament had passed a resolution prohibiting the announcement of any successor to the throne. He refused dinner, but took a piece of bread and a final glass of wine, and finally, at the appointed time he was escorted to the Great
Banqueting House. Now this was during the Little Ice Age, and it was so cold that the Thames had frozen. When Charles stepped out from a window under the first floor, the low scaffold was before him. It was draped in black, and two executioners were heavily disguised. In fact, still to this day, hundreds of years later, no one knows their identities. The cavalry stood at either end of the street, and arm guards kept back the people. Spectators thronged the rooftops
in the houses and in the street itself. The king tried to speak to them, but they were way too far off, so he dictated his last words to a shorthand writer and to attendance. Among them was his declaration that quote, A subject and a sovereign are clear different things. I die a martyr to the people. Then he laid down his head upon the scaffold. The Bishop of London was there with him, and they had the following exchange. There was but one stage more. It is turbulent and troublesome,
but a short one. You will carry you from earth to heaven, and there you will find joy and comfort. Charles responded, I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown. The Bishop had the final word, saying, only you exchange and earthly for an eternal crown, a good exchange. One blow separated Charles's head from his shoulders. The head was held up and then announced in the traditional fashion, the
head of a traitor. At that moment, according to an eyewitness, Philip Henry quote, there was such a groan by the thousands and thousands then present as never heard before, and desire I may never hear again.