Wednesday 10 October 1660

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• N Paul Brewster on Fri 10 Oct 2003, 11:14pm. Flag this

  such a bench of noblemen as hath not been ever seen in England
  L&M footnote: “Sir Hardress Waller and 31 other regicides had been indicted before a grand jury of Middlesex on the previous day at Hick’s Hall; on this day began their trial at the Session House (Old Bailey) before a commission of oyer and terminer. Two (not one as Pepys states) pleaded guilty — Waller and George Fleetwood … The Lord Mayor was Sir Thomas Aleyn.”

• N Paul Brewster on Fri 10 Oct 2003, 11:19pm. Flag this

  In Sir Orland. Brigeman

• N Glyn on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 12:12am. Flag this

  A few months ago, someone remarked that the change in regime appeared to be remarkably peaceful and humane. Perhaps in the wider sense it was, but there was still a butcher’s bill to be paid and these people are about to pay it.

  Of course, there’s no doubt about what the verdicts are going to be - this is more like an old communist show trial and the jurors will vote the way they’ve been told, i.e. ‘guilty’.

  I can just about understand the Cavaliers’ actions here - especially those who risked their lives fighting for the executed King and then wasted years of their lives in exile. But it sticks in my stomach to see the actions of turncoats such as Monck and Sandwich who will condemn their former colleagues to death for the sake of preferment. They could have tried to avoid sitting in judgment in the trial - no doubt it would have ended their careers but nothing else. Sandwich is not a coward - in a few years he will literally “die fighting” for his king and country against the Dutch - but I am talking about moral courage here.

  I think Pepys is genuine when he writes thatthe chief prosecutor: “did wholly rip up the unjustness of the war against the King from the beginning, and so it much reflects upon all the Long Parliament” (after all, why would he lie to his own diary?). But he doesn’t seem to me to be deeply political - he doesn’t write any deep political thoughts in his diary, and maybe a 27-year-old still in this era tends to believe what his elders and betters tell him, if people with other views keep them to themselves. He is more and more looking like a typical English pragmatist - just getting on with the job.

• N vincent on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 03:16am. Flag this

  “jurers ” They had to be picked from the Property classes. A Peek ahead It was not until 1668 that a Juror or jurers could disagree with a Judge [ and get away with it], Judge could menace them ,fine them or put them in to the local prison. [see CofE 1603-1714 C. Hill pg 194] and took ‘til 1670 to to establish this principle.

• N Roger Arbor on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 07:50am. Flag this

  John Evelyn writes on the subject of “… those barbarous Regicides…”
  I went to Lond: to be sworn a Commissioner of the Sewers; & this day were those barbarous Regicides, who sat on the life of our late King, brought to their Tryal in the old baily, by a Commission of Oyer & terminer: I return

• N Roger Arbor on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 07:58am. Flag this

  … And don’t forget, this is a quartering offence, so Glyn’s ‘butcher’s bill’, is exactly right. And one of those in the dock was, yes, a butcher. As Dicken’s has Jerry Cruncher say in ‘Tale of two cities’: “Barbarous, to see a man wasted”

• N Mary on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 08:09am. Flag this

  The lot of the juror in any trial

  was not always a happy one. (see Picard, p232ff.) Jurors were shut up without rest, food or water until they reached a verdict. If a judge disagreed with the verdict, he could send them back, still without sustenance, until they cmae to the right verdict. One judge (in a trial of certain Quakers for unlawful assembly) fined his jurymen and sent them to Newgate Prison when they refused to convict.

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 02:20pm. Flag this

  Thomas Scott
  The regicide Secretary of State.
  see http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/139.php
  

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 02:27pm. Flag this

  Coke - John Cook
  Wheatley: “a member of Gray’s Inn, appointed Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth, and ordered to prepare the charge against Charles I. Owing to the illness of the Attorney-General, the conduct of the prosecution fell chiefly upon him. He was rewarded for his services by being made Master of the Hospital of St. Cross. In 1655 appointed Justice of the Court of Upper Bench in Ireland. He was excluded by name from the Act of Indemnity, and executed October 16, 1660. He wrote several pamphlets, some of which were very scurrilous in language.”
  

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 02:29pm. Flag this

  Peters
  Hugh Peters, see http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/1273.php

• N helena murphy on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 02:46pm. Flag this

  And who exactly did the regicides represent when they tried and sentenced to death Charles I? The Irish and the Scots over whom he ruled did not want his death ,along with the Levellers,the Presbyterians and most of those who fought against him.Sir Thomas Fairfax,the army’s commander, would have nothing to do with it and Cromwell used the trial to detract from urgent social problems which needed reform.On the morning of his death Charles said to Sir Thomas Herbert,”I fear not death.Death is not terrible to me.I bless my God I am Prepared.”Physically small and frail, the King died nobly having forgiven his enemies and in no doubt that the throne would be settled upon his son which indeed did come to pass.

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 02:49pm. Flag this

  such a bench of noblemen as had not been ever seen in England! They all seem to be dismayed, and will all be condemned without question
  The looseness of the word “all” in this connection seems appropriate. The “noblemen” at the dock and the noblemen at the bench were probably all dismayed though for different reasons: the former in the direct sense and the latter for the near misses that save them from appearing at the dock (especially with regard Monck and Sandwich). They will probably all be condemned: the former by those at the bench and those at the bench in the critical eyes of some historians.
  

• N M.Stolzenbach on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 05:08pm. Flag this

  Glyn writes

  “Of course, there

• N vincent on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 07:36pm. Flag this

  many were tried “in abstentia ” of the possible 100 people involved in “CI removal” only 13 were condemned out of the 41 available for punishment to the infamous “HDQ ” 10 now 3 later.
  2 sites of interest; google Regicides and there is wealth of “info”
  http://www.axtellfamily.org/axfamous/regicide/RegicideNumber.htm
  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/STUregicides.htm

  
  

• N vincent on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 07:43pm. Flag this

  List of heads that will be separated from their bodies:
  Major-General Harrison, Mr. John Carew, Chief Justice Coke, Mr. Hugh Peters, Mr. Thomas Scot, Mr. Gregory Clement, Colonel Adrian Scroop, Colonel John Jones, Colonel Francis Hacker, and Colonel Daniel Axtel

• N vincent on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 09:49pm. Flag this

  Glyn: don’t forget that feller that gave the name to the street for the first ministers. Just recently another Lord did get rid of all those be-seated lairds. He Changed History very quietly with a well versed tongue not his own (Lord G. Williams) and not one drop of blood was spilt or wasted. The National health system is so in need of some blood too.

• N David A. Smith on Sat 11 Oct 2003, 10:02pm. Flag this

  “he did wholly rip up the unjustness of the war”
  When Charles I was executed — a traumatic event without precedent in English history — Sam was 14, an impressionable age. Since then he will have heard little but Royalist propaganda. Now he comes to power via personal encounters with the returning king and his fawning court. Perhaps we should cut the lad a little slack in his historical perspective …

• N Jackie on Sun 12 Oct 2003, 08:36am. Flag this

  This was a time when the whole concept of treason was changing. Until then, treason was considered to be solely about people betraying their King. Yet Charles I had effectively declared war on his own nation - those who he had sworn to protect in his coronation oath.

  In effect, Charles I was done for treason against his Country. Not a legal concept which his son would agree with, yet it was a very important step.

• N Kenneth on Tue 14 Oct 2003, 04:08pm. Flag this

  (in a trial of certain Quakers for unlawful assembly)

  One of them being William Penn, the son of Sam’s colleague.