The Trial of Charles I

Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Diane Purkiss and David Wootton discuss the trial of Charles I, recounting the high drama in Westminster Hall and the ideas that led to the execution.Begun on 20th January 1649, the trial culminated in the epoch-making execution of an English monarch. But on the way it was a drama of ideas about kingly authority, tax, parliamentary power and religion, all suffused with personal vendettas, political confusion and individual courage. It was also a forum in which the newly-ended Civil War and the events of Charles’s reign were picked over by the people who had experienced them. Melvyn and guests recount the events of the trial, explore the central arguments and see whether, 350 years later, we can work out who really won.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Justin Champion 11 episodes
  Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London
• Diane Purkiss 4 episodes
  Fellow and tutor at Keble College, Oxford
• David Wootton 16 episodes
  Professor of History at the University of York

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Programme ID: b00kpzd6

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kpzd6

Auto-category: 942.06 (British history - English monarchy and Civil War)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In defending the killing of a king, the poet and republican John Milton declared, if men within themselves would be governed by reason and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without and blind affections from within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation.