New perspectives on the trial of Charles Ist
The Cromwell Association’s Annual Study Day is an opportunity to investigate a subject central to our understanding of the seventeenth century, and what could be more central than the trial and execution of Charles Ist?
Historians will examine different aspects of the trial, the people involved, and the impact both on them and society. The Association provides an opportunity to hear about the most recent research in the field and provides a forum for the academic and non-academic worlds to intersect.
The programme comprises five talks, two in the morning session which focusses on the immediate legacy of 1648, and three in the afternoon which look at the afterlife of the regicide.
The Remonstrance of the Army: A Blueprint for Regicide?
Professor Ted Vallance
The army’s Remonstrance of November 1648, usually thought to be authored by Cromwell’s son-in-law, Commissary-General Henry Ireton, has divided historical opinion. According to some, the Remonstrance assumed the guilt of the king and that the verdict of his trial would be a capital sentence. Others, such as Phil Baker and Sean Kelsey, have suggested it was a more ambiguous text and that its call for justice was not the same as a demand for Charles I’s death. This paper will address this debate by looking at the contemporary reception of the Remonstrance to reveal how people at the time understood the text.
What to do with a king and with monarchy: Cromwell, Ireton and the chaos of December 1648
Professor John Morrill
Will seek to find a way that the competing interpretations over the trial and execution of Charles are all right and all wrong and that we have overlooked a bitter struggle for power within the Army and Parliament in the weeks before and after the purge of the Long Parliament on 6th December 1648.
Lunch
Remembering Regicide
Dr Imogen Peck
On a chilly winter morning in January 1649, Charles I was escorted onto a scaffold outside the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. He said a few words to the crowd and then turned to his companion, Dr William Juxon, and uttered the word ‘Remember’. But what exactly was the appropriate way to remember the death of a king at the hands of his own subjects? This paper explores the multifaceted – and often conflicting and contradictory – ways that the execution of Charles I has been remembered, forgotten, and (mis)represented, from the immediate aftermath of the conflict through to the present day.
‘Stout and resolved hearts keep off the storms of Calumny’: John Bradshawe and the aftermath of regicide
Dr Charlotte Young
Will consider how the legacy of the trial of Charles I affected John Bradshawe, the judge tasked with sentencing the king to death. Denounced by the royalist press variously as a coward, a monster, a traitor, a rogue, and indeed a 17th century Pontius Pilate, there is no doubt that his association with the trial blackened his name – but how did it affect him on a personal level?
Remembering the Trial of Charles I before and after the Restoration: the memoirs of Bulstrode Whitelocke
Dr Jonathan Fitzgibbons
Focusing mainly on the memoirs of the Parliamentarian MP and lawyer, Bulstrode Whitelocke, this paper will explore how the trial of Charles I was remembered both before and after 1660. Using new evidence, including deleted passages from Whitelocke’s memoirs written before the Restoration, the paper will unravel the ways in which religious beliefs and shifting political circumstances shaped recollections of past events. While Whitelocke and other moderate Parliamentarians clearly wanted no part in the king’s trial in 1649, and criticized those proceedings vehemently after the Restoration, this paper will reveal how and why they actually came to recall the regicide with a degree of approval during the Interregnum period.
The chair for the day will be Dr Ismini Pells, President of the Cromwell Association
The event takes place in the Friends Meeting House in Oxford, and the charge of £40 for members and £50 for non-members, includes coffee on arrival and a light buffet lunch. All bookings must be received by Friday 11th October – early booking secures your place.
For full details and booking form click here (pdf)