Who was the last English monarch with the power to order the execution of someone? Richard III ordered the beheading of William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, who had the distinction of being the first person executed at the Tower of London on June 13, 1483.
When did this authority end?
Technically, since all prosecutions are at the behest of the Crown in the UK, the last monarch with the power to order an execution was and is Elizabeth II. Capital punishment was only completely abolished in 1998, although the last execution was in 1964.
But I’m sure here you’re talking about the monarch ordering someone having their head removed from their body, “off with their head” in the most literal sense. Well, as near as I can make it the last time that happened was in 1747, when Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat was beheaded at Tower Hill for treason. Then again, Fraser and the other Jacobite rebels were tried by a jury, or in some cases by the Privy Council.
I think you’ll have to go back to Charles II for the last real “off with his head” order. Charles II certainly personally ordered the beheading of Oliver Cromwell in 1661. Nitpickers will say that Oliver was already dead for over two years when the order was made. Well, true enough. But it’s likely that Charles II also personally ordered the beheading of the Marquess of Argyll, without the benefit of a jury trial.
Incidentally, the Parliament of Oliver Cromwell liberated a lot more people’s heads from their bodies than any monarch either immediately before or after.
I had never heard any specifics about the 1st Marquess of Argyl but it does look like something vaguely resembling the law was respected in his regard.
He was acquitted on the initial charges against him. New information came about damning him, he was then beheaded before Charles II had actually signed the death warrant. That’s obviously legally improper, but it seems that might be more on the people carrying out the execution than the King himself? And it does seem as though some matter of law was followed. Google and Wikipedia are sadly sparse on specifics so I’d have to do more digging.
The thing about most of the early Stuart monarchs and the Tudor monarchs before them is they did have the power to have people killed more or less at will. However, that power was politically checked at various times, and you will note those monarchs more often than not used the guise of the law to carry out executions. Often in show trials of the worst kind, with pure liars testimony and entirely fabricated physical evidence, but the monarchs had enough respect for the law to do a show trial.
If an individual was politically connected enough, that could also often save them from execution in its own right.
Those monarchs also sometimes had their agents do murder in their name. However, it was clandestine, and if ever questioned the monarch’s involvement was strictly denied. Many of the individuals that died during the rebellions in the north of England during Henry VIII’s reign were summarily executed without trial. However, if ever pushed it could always be said that was something done without Henry’s prior approval or knowledge.
Even back to the 1100s Kings seemed to use such methods to kill people. Henry II’s knights that murdered Thomas Becket for example were technically acting illegally and swore it was not on the orders of the King–history is still unsure on that one.
The difference for me I suppose is that a Roman Emperor had various offices that effectively made up the legal framework of their power. One of those offices was *Tribunitia Potestas(*tribunician power.)
Historically Rome was ran by various magistrates. The chief magistrates were the two Consuls who as most know ruled concurrently and could veto one another. Early in the Republic, during a war, the plebeians revolted and demanded the right to elect their own magistrates. (Plebeians could be magistrates, and some were, but the system heavily favored patricians holding magistrate office.) The patricians granted the request and tribunes came into existence. Tribunes could only be plebeians, and were elected exclusively by plebeians. Tribunes had vast authority to veto and stop action, in the general craziness of the time their veto power only had authority during their physical presence. Anything they vetoed could be resumed and executed the moment a tribune had left, but their power to veto and establish criminal proceedings gave them real power.
Interestingly the chief magistrates of Rome, the two Consul’s did not have the power to order capital punishment, and in fact within Rome no citizen could be put to death by a Consul without a trial.
In terms of the State, a tribune had less power than the two consuls, but the power that a tribune possessed had some unique properties. Firstly, it was a capital offense to interfere with the actions of a tribune. A tribune could use any degree of physical force to stop anyone from interfering with his actions. A tribune could also condemn someone to death for interfering with their actions.
When Augustus became emperor he consolidated various offices to essentially create the position of Roman Emperor. Starting with Augustus Roman Emperors held the power of a tribune, the novel thing was they held it without being a plebeian (as Roman Emperors tended towards the Patrician class.) They were also consuls and the official leaders of the Empire’s religion. History tends to judge the beginning of an Emperor’s reign as the point in which he assumed the powers of a tribune (when orderly, a Roman imperial transition tended to involve a successor gradually assuming the various offices that made up the position of Emperor.)
What all of this is to say under the laws of Rome, if the Emperor felt you were interfering with his actions, as the greatest and most powerful tribune, he could legally and lawfully have you killed and there was no legal veto from any party.
True power of life and death.
I do not know how far back in English history you have to go to find a time when that was legal. As King, if an English King of the 1200s or 1300s said “fuck that guy, I want him dead, now” I’m positive someone would oblige him and also positive the King would suffer no repercussions. However, would it be technically legal? For a Roman Emperor their acts genuinely were in that regard.
Well, the Bill of Rights became law in 1689, so definitley not after that.
Not really before that, either. The power of English monarchs has been restricted by laws since long before the Magna Carta. The last English king that could order an execution and have it carried out with no legal restrictions was probably one of the Saxon kings. And even they had laws.
English kings certainly had people executed, but not in the unrestricted and arbitrary way that Americans seem to believe they did. I think American Revolutionary propaganda did its job all too well: I’ve seen Americans on this board state (and apparently believe) that English royalty was unrestricted by laws up until the 20th century and that Queen Victoria was a tyrant that had people executed at will. No, that was the Queen of Hearts, folks.
Which is not to say they never had people simply murdered without bothering with the whole legal rigamarole. Will no one rid me of that turbulent priest, eh ?
And if you really want to get technical, Elizabeth II has English (among other) ancestry no matter where she’s the Queen, and it’s where she spends most of her time, so it wouldn’t be totally improper to say that St. Kitts and Nevis has an “English monarch.” The last execution there was in 2008. (And while the last execution in the UK was in 1964, the last under British jurisdiction anywhere was in 1977 in Bermuda.)
Oh, certainly, but pretty much everyone with the power to do it does that; politicians, merchants, religious leaders, gangsters in general. Murdering inconvenient or annoying people is hardly the sole prerogative of royalty.
I don’t have anything factual to contribute to this very interesting thread, but there’s a bit from A Man For All Seasons which strikes me as apt when discussing rulers with unchecked power.
James I caused a minor scandal when he had a pickpocket executed without trial as he was making his way to London after Liz I died. Apparently a monarch doing so was kosher in Scotland, but not in his new kingdom of England. So by 1603 it was considered illegal for a king to order executions without a trial.
This is a very interesting understanding of “respect for the law.”
nm
I said they had “enough respect for the law to do a show trial.” That obviously isn’t saying they have much respect for it. Stalin and Hitler had their kangaroo courts as well but more often than not just didn’t bother, bullets to the back of the head in a dark room and no one the wiser was their style (when dealing with internal opponents inside their regimes–poor souls outside got it much more publicly and usually worse.)
It also means that even in the period 1400-1600 and even in the 1100s and 1200s English society was a society in which the King was generally viewed as being bound by the laws even though he was ultimate sovereign and promulgator of the laws. Those were vastly different times than today, and any English King from that period is a tyrant by modern reckoning, but they were not totalitarian rulers and history shows that when they were heavy handed they were more often than not desirous to make their actions appear both morally and legally just.
Oh absolutely. I merely pointed it out as a counterpoint to what I felt to be perhaps too rosy a portrait of kings and monarchy (English or otherwise). Most of thems really wos right bastards, anyway you look at it.
Exactly.
Queen Victoria was the one who had to keep running all the time just to stay in one place.