Did King Charles I really deserve his fate?

[Sarah Woodruff]

Charles I was executed in 1649 on the orders of Cromwell after being found guilty of high treason.

Between 1629 and 1640 he had refused to call Parliament - From this site (http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page76.asp) [which may have a bit of familial bias, but don't we all?]
Although opponents later called this period 'the Eleven Years' Tyranny', Charles's decision to rule without Parliament was technically within the King's royal prerogative, and the absence of a Parliament was less of a grievance to many people than the efforts to raise revenue by non-parliamentary means.

Charles was offensive to many of his subjects for reasons of religion - he married a Catholic - as well as financial reasons; he thought he had a Divine Right to rule over the country as he personally saw fit, and he decided to solve his funding problem by arresting several Members of Parliament (http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon47.html) on trumped-up charges.

Nightmarish times, no?

Yet I would submit that he was hardly the first monarch to display these traits, and, well, maybe it's just me but this frail stammerer (http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/history/portraits/images/034%20King%20Charles%20I.jpg) hardly comes across as Evil Incarnate. Henry VIII died in his bed, for crying out loud. Why didn't Charles also die a natural death? There must be more to it than Cromwell = Good hardworking democratic founding father and Charles I = despotic parasitic national blight. Was Charles merely the fall guy for several centuries of other peoples' despotism?

[mks57]

Whether he "deserved it" is a value judgement. Executions were commonly carried out for political reasons. You can't be a claimant to the throne if you're dead.

[clairobscur]

I don't know about Charles I, but this part :


Cromwell = Good hardworking democratic founding father

made me cringe....

[Walloon]

This question doesn't really have a factual answer.

[Tapioca Dextrin]

Executions were commonly carried out for political reasons.

True for a bunch of folks, but executing the King was a unique event in British history. Henry VIII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_viii#The_King.27s_Great_Matter) had two wives executed. There was the whole princes/tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_tower) debacle. Edward II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II_of_England#Life_in_captivity_and_death) had the whole red hot poker thing going. But trying a king? In a time when kings ruled by divine right and weren't subject to parliamentary rule? Didn't happen.

[smiling bandit]

In moral or legal terms, no he probably didn't, and Cromwell was a jerk. Aside from that, who cares? Cromwell killed him because of political reasons, nothing more.

[David Simmons]

In moral or legal terms, no he probably didn't, and Cromwell was a jerk. Aside from that, who cares? Cromwell killed him because of political reasons, nothing more.Right. You just can't tolerate an ex-king hanging around stirring up trouble.

[PBear42]

As a factual question, consider this alternate formulation: Why did the rebels think Charles deserved to die? Of the many books addressing the topic, I particularly liked and recommend Simon Schama's History of Britain, vol. 2 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786867523/qid=1124898530/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-2054688-7532838?v=glance&s=books). Like the rest of the series too, incidentally, but think this is the strongest volume. No need to buy, BTW; it's a well-known book and probably available from your local library.

[Northern Piper]

Right. You just can't tolerate an ex-king hanging around stirring up trouble.Except there is a good argument that on a strategic political assessment, the trial and execution of Charles I was a major political blunder by the Commonwealth men. As long as they had Charles I in their control, they had the head of the Royal government. Under a monarchical system founded on personal rule, that was a real stymie for the Royalists.

As soon as they executed him, there was a new King, Charles II, at liberty in France, able to stir up trouble, appoint a government in exile, intrigue with royalists in England, seek support from the French king, and so on.

[Northern Piper]

Hit reply instead of preview. Meant to add - perhaps this thread should be shifted to GD?

[bibliophage]

Off with your h--

Off to GD, I mean.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

[Captain Amazing]

From the Lord President of the Court's comments to the king during his trial.

Sir, you have held yourself, and let fall such Language, as if you had been no ways Subject to the Law, or that the Law had not been your Superior. Sir, The Court is very well sensible of it, and I hope so are all the understanding People of England, That the Law is your Superior, that you ought to have ruled according to the Law, you ought to have done so. Sir, I know very well your pretence hath been that you have done so, but Sir, the difference hath been who shall be the Expositors of this Law, Sir, whether you and your Party out of Courts of Justice shall take upon them to expound Law, or the Courts of Justice, who are the Expounders; nay, the Sovereign and the High Court of Justice, the Parliament of England, that are not only the highest expounders, but the sole makers of the Law. Sir, for you to set yourself with your single judgment, and those that adhere unto you, to set yourself against the highest Court of Justice, that is not Law.

Sir, as the Law is your Superior; so truly Sir, there is something that is Superior to the Law, and that is indeed the Parent or Author of the Law, and that is the People of England, For Sir, as they are those that at the first (as other Countries have one) did choose to themselves the Form of Government, even for justice sake, that Justice might be administered, that Peace might be preserved, so Sir, they gave Laws to their Governors, according to which they should Govern, and if those Laws should have proved inconvenient, or prejudicial to the Public, they had a power in them and reserved to themselves to alter as they shall see cause. . . .This we learn, the end of having Kings, or any other Governors, it's for the enjoying of Justice, that's the end. Now Sir, if so be the King will go contrary to that End, or any other Governor will go contrary to the end of his Government; Sir, he must understand that he is but an Officer in trust, and he ought to discharge that Trust, and they are to take order for the animadversion and punishment of such an offending Governor.

[Lemur866]

Since the beginning of history there probably have been at least a half dozen or so kings that wouldn't have been improved by hacking off their heads. I'm sure I'd be able to come up with a list if I thought a while. Hmmm....uhh....

[garius]

There must be more to it than Cromwell = Good hardworking democratic founding father

Think of Cromwell as an "accidental democrat". He believed in power and position based on ability, and that everyone, regardless of class or religion* should have the opportunity to reach that position. Everyone was equal in the eyes of God, and everyone was equal in the eyes of the State and subject to the rules thereof - be they King or Carpenter.

It was this that put him into conflict with the King and, later, with Parliament.

Was Charles merely the fall guy for several centuries of other peoples' despotism?

Partially, but he also brought it on himself.

You can probably argue that by the time of his execution Charles completely embodied the idea of absolute monarchy, and that, ultimately, this contributed greatly to his trial and death, since he represented everything that was politically anathaema to the new State.

What's important to remember however is that Charles embodied this not just because he was King, but because he himself cultivated this image.

Why? Well Charles was a fervent and unwavering believer in the Divine Right of Kings. This was the idea that the King was accountable to no-one but God and that, by definition, not only was the King not subject to the will of his people and the state but that to ever go against the King's wishes was to go against the Will of God.

Now ever since the Magna Carta, most English Monarchs had been smart enough not to mention the whole "Divine Right" thing in polite conversation (at least not unless they had a sufficiently large army to back them up). In return, the ruling classes (be they Barons or Parliament) had agreed not to bring up the matter and question its validity in an age no longer plagued by rampaging Vikings or anti-Norman sentiment.

So basically, by the 17th Century the unwritten rules of government where that the King could do whatever he liked as long as:

1) He asked Parliament first and at least pretended to listen to what they were saying.
2) He didn't mention the whole "Divine Right" thing within their earshot or brag about it to his mates.
3) He didn't do anything outrageously and obviously fucking stupid and/or expensive.

So when, after a few years in power, Charles starts saying that:

1) I don't need your permission to do anything. I'll ask you sometimes if i think you'll agree with me and even then only if i remember.
2) I'll tell the whole fucking country if i want.
3) If i want to start expensive wars with Spain and France i will. Oh yeah, and i'm putting my mate Buckingham in charge of the campaigns, even if he is one of the worst Generals ever.

You can imagine that politically he wasn't exactly making friends or adhering to the principles of English Government. The lines for the Civil War were drawn.

So you can probably imagine that, since Charles had come to represent everything that the war had been fought against it would be impossible not to do something suitably extreme with him after the war.

Don't make the mistake though of assuming that the moment hostility ceased, Charles was doomed to the executioners axe. Truth be told, no one knew what to do with him (mainly because they hadn't expected to win). The concept of Divine Right may have run contrary to their political beliefs, but the step from that to killing a reigning monarch was enormous. Sure, they'd mouthed off about it, but no one was seriously expecting to have to go through with it - it was a Magna Carta situation again - beat the King, humble him a bit, then go back to business as usual.

This is where, again, Charles' own behavior and beliefs came into play and helped seal his fate. Not only would he still not shut up about the whole issue (talk about a sore loser) but he also knew that Parliament was unsure what to do with him and played an incredibly complex political game with himself at the centre and the Army, Parliament and the Scots/Royalists as the rival players.

This was a massive risk to take - Charles was now deliberately gambling with his own life. He knew that the longer he could stall a decision on his fate through political manoeuvring and playing the unrepentent Absolule Monarch, the more likely Parliament was to chicken out of making any decision at all and collapsing in on itself.

It was an all-or-nothing play of course, because now not only did he continue to embody everthing that the war had been fought over, but he also posed a significant threat to the stability and indeed very existence of the new State.

"I am King and therefore i am the originator of law, not subject to it. Kill me or agree with me. I ain't moving" was pretty much his message.

He was trying to call Parliament's bluff.

He would almost certainly have got away with it too, if Cromwell hadn't stepped in. Cromwell, backed up by the army, forced Parliament to put its money where its mouth was. It was he who almost singlehandedly forced through Charles' conviction for treason, it was he who literally forced the judges to sign the King's death warrant and it was he who pretty much made sure that events progressed to their gruesome end.

I'm guessing neither the King or Cromwell was someone you'd ever want to play poker against.

So i guess the short answer to your question is this:

Charles I was defeated for what he represented, but he was killed for who he was.




*unless you were a catholic obviously :(

[Gala Matrix Fire]

I'm no expert, but if memory serves he twice hired foreign armies to wage war on his own subjects. Seems execution-worthy to me.

[Sarah Woodruff]

Whether he "deserved it" is a value judgement. Executions were commonly carried out for political reasons. You can't be a claimant to the throne if you're dead.

No no no - he was the first Head of State to be tried in a court of his own realm and executed. That's what makes the whole situation jump out at you from a period of heads going off left right and centre.

I had no idea whether this was a GQ or a GD question - sorry people.

I'll come back after work and have a go at digesting the other answers.

[JRDelirious]

I'm no expert, but if memory serves he twice hired foreign armies to wage war on his own subjects. Seems execution-worthy to me.
By the standards of the time, wholly unremarkable.

[Steve MB]

True for a bunch of folks, but executing the King was a unique event in British history. Henry VIII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_viii#The_King.27s_Great_Matter) had two wives executed. There was the whole princes/tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_tower) debacle. Edward II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II_of_England#Life_in_captivity_and_death) had the whole red hot poker thing going. But trying a king? In a time when kings ruled by divine right and weren't subject to parliamentary rule? Didn't happen.
IIRC, Richard II was tried and deposed, but not executed. (Killed by the new regime, almost certainly, but not under color of law.)

[Sarah Woodruff]

I don't know about Charles I, but this part :
made me cringe....
I was being a bit sarcastic...Cromwell always struck me as resembling The Boss from Hell. ;)

That was an amazing analysis, garius. It seems like Charles very foolishly and delusionally decided to push his luck as far as it could run. He was the Head of State, nothing could touch him...he was God's Anointed!
It's interesting that Capt'n Amazing posted that exerpt from the trial. The reason I got to thinking about Charles was that the weekend paper reviewed a new book by Geoffrey Robertson Q.C. (http://www.randomhouse.com.au/WEB_ASP/ttle_detail.asp?ISBN=0701176024) which is supposed to be the first biography of the man who led the prosecution case against Charles. From a legal point of view, to try a Head of State for treason was an incredible thing to contemplate. I can't quite equate Charles I with Slobodan Milosevic in my head. It leads me to think that Cromwell, although he liked to be thought of as Holier than Thou, really just saw the ruthless option as likely to have the best political outcome for himself, and grabbed for it with both hands.

I'll be ferreting out the Schama book - I saw some of the TV series but missed the Stuart episode.

[garius]

It seems like Charles very foolishly and delusionally decided to push his luck as far as it could run. He was the Head of State, nothing could touch him...he was God's Anointed!

Kinda, but then, as i mentioned, he probably would have got away with it if it hadn't been for Cromwell.

Don't forget that at the time of the execution Cromwell was still a long way from the peak of his power - he was still just an MP and was not yet supreme commander of the army. You can't really blame Charles for not expecting him to throw a spanner in the works.

So yeah, maybe Charles was foolish for taking the gamble, but he came desperately close to pulling it off. You gotta give the bloke his due :D

It leads me to think that Cromwell, although he liked to be thought of as Holier than Thou, really just saw the ruthless option as likely to have the best political outcome for himself, and grabbed for it with both hands.

Cromwell could be a bit of a pompous arsehole sometimes but generally he was pretty down-to-earth. We tend to remember Cromwell the General and Cromwell the Dictator but forget Cromwell the Family Man, Cromwell the Good Mate and Cromwell the Keen Practical Joker - by most accounts he was a great bloke to be friends with, he just didn't have a lot of 'em!

Also, its worth remembering that Cromwell never really sought power for the sake of power, his rise was largely the result of his wish to see England as a meritocracy - he wanted the best bloke for the job to be in charge. Initially he thought this was Parliament, but after they repeatedly fucked it up, he decided to take on that role himself until they could be trusted with it.

Eventually of course, he just decided that they would never be better at it than he was, so had himself declared Lord Protector.

So basically Cromwell thought power should rest with whoever would be best at the job. He just happened to furvently believe that that was himself :rolleyes: (although he may have had a point :D ).

[Martiju]

Cromwell was the archetypal personification of the saying: 'Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' He basically got into the situation of finding that it's easier for one person to govern than for an elected parliament to do so. Of course, the 'one person' did not have a divine right!

Incidentally, you can see the waistcoat that Charles was wearing when executed at Longleat House, near Bath in England. The bloodstains are still visible and it is a chilling artefact from over 350 years ago.

[Captain Amazing]

Cromwell was the archetypal personification of the saying: 'Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' He basically got into the situation of finding that it's easier for one person to govern than for an elected parliament to do so. Of course, the 'one person' did not have a divine right!

While Cromwell did make out financially from the Protectorate, there's no real indication that he himself was personally corrupt or that he allowed his desire for personal gain to shape his actions.

[APB]

Bradshaw's speech needs to be read in the context of the comments by Charles I (http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/charles.html) to which he was responding, a speech which most historians agree played at least as well with contemporary opinion. Bradshaw may read now as if it was stirring stuff, but he was on the defensive, fully aware that Charles had hit home when he claimed that, compared to them, he was the real defender of traditional law. Nor was this a new theme for Charles, for it was exactly what he had been saying with great subtlety and much intellectual sophistication since 1641. (The subtlety and sophistication having initially been provided by his ghost-writer, Sir Edward Hyde.)

Moreover, as Richard Cust stresses in his major new biography of him (http://www.pearsoned.co.uk/Bookshop/article.asp?item=877), Charles actually believed this stuff. Talk about 'divine right' and 'absolute power' misses the point. Almost everyone, including most of the members of the high court of justice, believed that the king was God's Anointed and that his power was 'absolute', which is hardly surprising when contemporary Englishmen had almost always previously associated the denial of such things with popery. The standard complaint of his critics was that he should rule more like Elizabeth I. But Charles thought that he was ruling like Elizabeth I. Same with religion. It wasn’t that Charles was any less ‘Protestant’ than his critics; it was that they disagreed about what being a Protestant meant. Most historians would now say that Charles was less right when he claimed that his was the traditional form of ‘Protestant’ Christianity (in contradiction to his opponents, who claimed that they were the real traditionalists), but that wasn’t at all obvious at the time and is a point that is still hotly debated.

Nor was his talk of wanting to work with Parliament dishonest. A point historians have only very recently begun to stress is that we should not forget that, unlike any of his predecessors within living memory, he had actually sat in a Parliament and not just in an honorary capacity either – one of the latest historiographical fashions is to see him as the leading figure in the 1624 Parliament, with him having used it to try to manipulate his father. He thus knew what it was like to manage a Parliament from the inside and so was correspondingly more inclined to see low motives behind his opponents' high talk. When he felt that the 1625, 1626 and 1628 Parliaments had betrayed him, he meant that personally, that men with whom he had worked closely in 1624 had failed to deliver on policies for which they had hitherto been gung-ho (war with Spain) now that it really mattered. By 1629 Charles could feel that he had twice given them the benefit of the doubt and that they had twice let him down. And he had a point. It was not that he somehow failed to see Parliament as the high-minded guardian of the national interests. Parliament wasn’t that and thinking that it was was a mistake he had made already. No, seventeenth-century Parliaments really were inconsistent, factious, petty-minded and often short-sighted. It is just that the smarter thing would have been to accept them for what they were, rather than to expect them to prove that they were better than that.

But he wasn’t politically stupid. One thing that Cust is very good on is how tactically astute he could be. Charles wasn’t a natural politician, but he was much smarter than his modern popular image. That was also his undoing. If he had been just the naïve idealist, a two-dimensional believer in his ‘divine right’, his critics would easily have outmanoeuvred him. There would have been no need to depose him or even to fight a civil war. The usual round of factional infighting at court would have done the trick. Indeed, that is pretty much what his leading critics in Parliament thought they were doing in 1640-2 and many of them continued to think in such terms right to the very end. Charles however played dirty and proved to be rather good at it. That was why he was able to fight Parliament in 1642 and why he was able to hold out against them until 1646.

garius’s poker analogy for the trial is a good one, but only if one recognises that the regicides’ bluff was also called. The most recent professional historian to have written in detail about the trial, Sean Kelsey, has turned the conventional interpretation on its head. (One of his articles (http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/22.1/kelsey.html) on the subject is available online.) Far from wanting to execute Charles, most of the members of the high court of justice only envisaged the trial as a prelude to further negotiations. Faced with the apparent threat of execution, Charles was supposed to make some sort of acknowledgement of his errors (not necessarily an actual guilty plea) and only then would they have begun negotiating. Even Cromwell would probably have preferred a deal on that basis. This backfired because, in hoping that Charles would plead, they gave him lots of chances to claim the (other) moral high ground. He mistakenly thought he had nothing to lose. Forced into this unexpected corner, the members of high court of justice – or rather the minority of them who were prepared to act – found themselves having to follow through the threat. They would doubtless have said, and indeed did say, that Charles deserved his fate, but it may not have been the one most of them had really wanted for him.

[garius]

garius’s poker analogy for the trial is a good one, but only if one recognises that the regicides’ bluff was also called. The most recent professional historian to have written in detail about the trial, Sean Kelsey, has turned the conventional interpretation on its head. (One of his articles on the subject is available online.) Far from wanting to execute Charles, most of the members of the high court of justice only envisaged the trial as a prelude to further negotiations. Faced with the apparent threat of execution, Charles was supposed to make some sort of acknowledgement of his errors (not necessarily an actual guilty plea) and only then would they have begun negotiating. Even Cromwell would probably have preferred a deal on that basis. This backfired because, in hoping that Charles would plead, they gave him lots of chances to claim the (other) moral high ground. He mistakenly thought he had nothing to lose. Forced into this unexpected corner, the members of high court of justice – or rather the minority of them who were prepared to act – found themselves having to follow through the threat. They would doubtless have said, and indeed did say, that Charles deserved his fate, but it may not have been the one most of them had really wanted for him.

I'd agree wholeheartedly with that. If Charles had shown any kind of willingness to come to the negotiating table at all then Parliament, and a good chunk of the army, would have welcomed that wholeheartedly. Trouble was he didn't and, to a certain extent, couldn't. After all, if he'd been inclined to negotiate then the war may never have happened or dragged on as long as it did in the first place.

Its important not to think of the English Civil War as being some kind of vast conflict between conflicting ideologies - it wasn't. Both sides largely shared the same beliefs and ideas on government. The dispute was more a struggle between two parties with slightly different views on where the final balance of power within that government sat.

There was no massive desire to execute Charles - very few people on the Parliamentary side didn't want there to be a king, they just wanted Charles to admit that he was wrong and apologise so things could essentially go back to the way they were.

It was a very English Revolution :D

So yeah, both sides got their bluff called in the end. The King never expected Parliament to go through with it, and Parliament never expected the King to let it get that far. Quite sad really when you think about it.

Maybe a better analogy would be a tragic game of Chicken - the tragedy being that neither side ultimately chickened out.

[APB]

I'd agree wholeheartedly with that. If Charles had shown any kind of willingness to come to the negotiating table at all then Parliament, and a good chunk of the army, would have welcomed that wholeheartedly. Trouble was he didn't and, to a certain extent, couldn't. After all, if he'd been inclined to negotiate then the war may never have happened or dragged on as long as it did in the first place.

Except that he had negotiated with Parliament, at Oxford in early 1643, at Uxbridge in early 1645 and at Newport in late 1648 and each time he thought that he had shown the greater willingness to compromise. With Parliament, of course, each time thinking the opposite.

His miscalculation in the long run was to think that he could get a better deal if he held out for one. But the main reason he thought that was because there were certain points in the short term when that had indeed proved to be the case. By rejecting the 1646 Newcastle Propositions, he had in 1647 got offered what he thought were the slightly more acceptable Heads of Proposals. It therefore wasn't completely implausible to assume that yet another shift in the factional infighting within Parliament might bring yet more concessions. After all, the main reason why the army expelled half the MPs from the Commons in December 1648 was because they feared that that was exactly what was about to happen.

[garius]

Except that he had negotiated with Parliament, at Oxford in early 1643, at Uxbridge in early 1645 and at Newport in late 1648 and each time he thought that he had shown the greater willingness to compromise. With Parliament, of course, each time thinking the opposite.

You're right, of course. Forgot about that :smack:

(I'm working from memory on this - all my books are back in the UK)

[Elendil's Heir]

Great discussion. To answer the OP, yes, I think he deserved his fate. Charles was pigheaded and held royalist views (duh) that were diametrically opposed to the views of Parliament, i.e. those in power. There was no indication that he would change his mind and, if he remained a captive, he might escape and/or become a focus of opposition to the Cromwellian state. The solution of the day, in England and so many other countries, was simple: off with his head.

A sidenote: I remember once reading that, when Winston Churchill was first heading the Admiralty, he wanted to name a warship after Cromwell (who had actually done a lot of good for the Navy in his day), but King George V forbade it. Even 300-some years later, the King didn't want a regicide commemorated with a warship.

Although there is a statue of Cromwell near the House of Commons, IIRC....

[garius]

Yeah, the statue of Cromwell is directly in front of Westminster Palace (Parliament) but it took a long time for him to get one.

AFAIK The statue was erected after fierce debate in the House of Commons. He'd effectively been written out of the other architectural memorial to the history of British Government - the line of kings, which runs around the palace frontage, jumps straight from Charles I to Charles II.

Then in 1895, The House of Commons narrowly voted 500 quid for a statue of Cromwell in front of the Palace of Westminster, but this was eventually withdrawn after fierce opposition in the House of Lords and parts of the press.

Finally an anonymous donor pledged 500 quid for a statue of Cromwell on condition that it appeared in a "suitable" location. Representatives from the House of Commons then decided that right in front of the Palace of Westminster just happened to be a really suitable place ;)

The statue was unveiled without ceremony at the end of the century and it was pretty much an open secret that the anonymous donor was none other than Earl Rosebery - the Prime Minister :D

A sidenote: I remember once reading that, when Winston Churchill was first heading the Admiralty, he wanted to name a warship after Cromwell (who had actually done a lot of good for the Navy in his day), but King George V forbade it. Even 300-some years later, the King didn't want a regicide commemorated with a warship.

Wouldn't surprise me. He wouldn't have been the only monarch with Cromwell issues - Queen Victoria allegedly refused to officially open Manchester Town Hall because the City Councillors refused to remove the statue of Cromwell erected in front of it.

[carnivorousplant]

Queen Victoria allegedly refused to officially open Manchester Town Hall because the City Councillors refused to remove the statue of Cromwell erected in front of it.
I'm sure she was not amused.

Did they really exhume the judge who sentenced Charles I and hang him unpon Charles II's return?

[Captain Amazing]

Did they really exhume the judge who sentenced Charles I and hang him unpon Charles II's return?

Yes. Charles II exhumed and displayed Oliver Cromwell, Herny Ireton, Thomas Pride, and John Bradshaw. He also executed, by hanging, drawing and quartering, Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scroope, John Carew, Thomas Scot, and Gregory Clement, Hugh Peters, Francis Hacker, Daniel Axtel, and John Cook. Another 19 men involved were put in prison for life.

[carnivorousplant]

Yes. Charles II exhumed and displayed Oliver Cromwell,

There is a certain amount of class to that, all though it is the sort shown by Al Capone and William the Bastard.

Capone was told that several innocent witnesses would have to be killed at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
"I'll send flowers."

William the Bastard, later Conquorer, cut off the right (left?) hands of men around a city that wouldn't surrender and catapulted the hands over the wall.
"Sorry Sir, a misunderstanding, we're terribly sorry, all on the same page now!"

[Imasquare]

I particularly liked and recommend Simon Schama's History of Britain, vol. 2 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786867523/qid=1124898530/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-2054688-7532838?v=glance&s=books) ...it's a well-known book and probably available from your local library.Its not just a book - I recently saw it on VHS.

[Bookkeeper]

A sidenote: I remember once reading that, when Winston Churchill was first heading the Admiralty, he wanted to name a warship after Cromwell (who had actually done a lot of good for the Navy in his day), but King George V forbade it. Even 300-some years later, the King didn't want a regicide commemorated with a warship.
Cromwell did get a tank named after him a war later, though (as did Churchill).

[smiling bandit]

Part of Charles' big problems were that he completely forgot about Scotland. Had he strongly held it, he might have been alright clear through. As it was, the Stewart line had basically ignored Scotland for several centuries, and Scotland repaid the favor in turn. The only loyalist part was the Highlands, and that was as much because of local poliics as any national feeling.