January 30th is the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I. Today, he was beheaded as a murderer and traitor. Or as a Royalist would see it, it is the anniversary of the Martyrdom of Charles I.
Thousands came to see the execution, amongst them Samuel Pepys. They crowded around the scaffold outside a window of Inigo Jones’s magnificent Banqueting Hall, in Whitehall, London. Charles was brought into the Banqueting House. There he must have looked up at the magnificent Peter Paul Reubens’ ceiling. Charles had commissioned the painting to depict of the Apotheosis of his father, James I. It was the symbol of the Divine Right of the King to rule.
Scaffold to Heaven?
I doubt he saw the irony. I suspect he thought he was going to heaven to join his father, in glory as a Martyr to his religion. He walked outside, through the window, into the cold January air. Two of his bloodstained shirts still exist, probably to stop him shivering. He wanted to be seen as going fearless to his death not shivering with fear. Then, he made a short speech exonerating himself. He spoke without stammering for the first time in his public life. The Rooftops around were lined with spectators. Black cloth framed the scaffold. As the executioner axe fell, there was a dull grown from the crowd (most could not see the axe falling).
This was on January 30th, 1648. But, if you look at a history book, it will tell you it was in 1649. This was before our conversation to the Gregorian calendar. Then the year number changed not as we do on January 1st but on March 25th. This was the day the Archangel Gabriel revealed to the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant. For more on the importance of March 25th look at my Almanac entry here:
‘Oh the stupendous, and inscrutable Judgements of God’
On the same day, twelve years later, in 1661 Oliver Cromwell and his chief henchmen were dug up from their splendid Westminster Abbey tombs. Their bodies were abused by official command. Cromwell’s head was stuck on the top of Westminster Hall. There it remained until blown off in the Great Fire of 1703 (or 1672, or 1684). Then, it taken to Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, which Cromwell attended. Only the Head Porter knew where. (According to someone who came on my Oliver Cromwell Walk last year.) Whether it is his head or not is disputed. The tale of the head is told in detail here.
The Royalist, John Evelyn, said in his diary:
This day (oh the stupendous, and inscrutable Judgements of God) were the Carkasses of that arch-rebel Cromwel1, Bradshaw, the Judge who condemned his Majestie and Ireton, sonn in law to the usurper, dragged out of their superb Tombs (in Westminster among the Kings) to Tybourne, and hanged on the Gallows there from 9 in the morning till 6 at night, and then buried under that fatal and ignominious Monument in a deep pit. Thousands of people (who had seen them in all their pride and pompous insults) being spectators .
Samuel Pepys records by contrast:
…do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was should have that dishonour, though otherwise he might deserve it enough…
Pepys served the Parliamentary side before the restoration of Charles II, when he adroitly, swapped over to the Royalist side.
Every year, I do a Guided Walk and a Virtual Tour on Charles I and the Civil War on this day or the last Sunday in January. Look here for details.
On This Day
1661 – Oliver Cromwell’s corpse disinterred and ritually executed
1826 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, considered the world’s first modern suspension bridge, Architect Thomas Telford
1933 – Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
1969 – Get Back to Where you Once Belonged – the anniversary of the rooftop concert in Saville Row where the Beatles played ‘Get Back’.
First published in 2023, revised on January 29th 2024,2025, 2026
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