On 20th March our lunchtime speaker was Mike Webb, curator of early modern archives & MSS at the Weston Library.

Mike shared with us some contemporary documents from the period from 21 March 1646 (the date when the Royalists were defeated at Stow on the Wold) until the execution of King Charles I in 1649.

After Stow, Sir Jacob Astley was taken prisoner, the royalist troops were scattered, and this represented the defeat of the last Royalist field force. Oxford fell shortly afterwards. This was the beginning of the end for the Royalists, although at that point in 1646 Charles still had a number of options, most particularly the support that he held in Scotland and Ireland. On top of that, Parliament was beginning to struggle to keep control, due to the wide discontent caused by the extortionate taxation imposed in order to continue to pay the Parliamentarian army.

So, Charles was placing his hope in Scotland and Ireland coming to his rescue, and the underlying issue remained that defeated or not, the King was still the King. Most people of the time still believed in kingly government, and Charles was not just going to stop being the king. A quote from the time was, “If we fight 100 times and beat him 99, he will be king still”.

Mike also shared with us an interesting anecdote from those holding the King at Holdenby. It seems that people were turning up in Holdenby, wanting the King to touch them (it was widely believed that scrofula could be cured by the touch of a King.)

Finally, Mike shared some quotes from a written deliberation about the execution of the King. This is fascinating because it examines the contemporary arguments either way. Comments were made about how Parliament had known from the start that execution would become a risk if the King kept fighting. There is also a clear indication that there was a feeling that responsibility fell on the King for all the deaths caused in the civil war. The contemporary estimate in that document was 300,000. The document says that Charles knew that people would die and he was therefore a man of blood (i.e. responsible for those deaths because he kept on fighting). On the other hand there was the acknowledgement that Parliament did not represent even Parliament’s own voice let alone the viewpoint of the Royalists. By the time of this document, Parliament had excluded those in Parliament who believed that the King should live, and therefore at best Parliament simply represented a faction. Even at the time, most people wanted the King to live.

Mike’s talk was a very interesting insight into contemporary views at this pivotal time in English history, and we are grateful to him for sharing his knowledge with us.