On This Day - 30th January 1649 ...

fmttmadmin

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... King Charles 1st was executed/

The execution happened in the afternoon before the public on a scaffold set up outside the Banqueting House in London.
The executioner wore a mask and wig to hide his identity but beheaded Charles with one blow of the axe. In other words he knew what he was doing.

Last words were uttered to witnesses around him as the rows of soldiers would prevent the crowd from hearing - Charles proclaimed he "would go from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible crown"

'The executioner silently held up Charles' head to the spectators and then dropped the king's head into the crowd and the soldiers swarmed around it, dipping their handkerchiefs in his blood and cutting off locks of his hair. The body was then put in a coffin and covered with black velvet."
 
Charles II was a really nasty piece of work. One of the most vindictive of people. I guess the regicide of his dad didn't please him too much. But there was no thought of making any concessions whatsoever when he returned to Britain as a king. He got busy executing anyone and everyone linked to his dad's execution and didn't matter if they were already dead. He dug up Cromwell's body and had his decayed head set on a spike.
He did also have a good hairstyle but continued to be a nasty piece..
All in all you have to wonder if the name Charles III was the best of ideas.
 
Charles II was a really nasty piece of work. One of the most vindictive of people. I guess the regicide of his dad didn't please him too much. But there was no thought of making any concessions whatsoever when he returned to Britain as a king. He got busy executing anyone and everyone linked to his dad's execution and didn't matter if they were already dead. He dug up Cromwell's body and had his decayed head set on a spike.
He did also have a good hairstyle but continued to be a nasty piece..
All in all you have to wonder if the name Charles III was the best of ideas.
He was. Parliament were too divided and afraid to repeat the Republican experiment. Some very early socialist ideas given in The Putney Debates by The Levellers. Fascinating times.
(He was king of England and Scotland, but not Britain which did not exist before the Act of Union in 1707).
 
They deliberately set up the scaffold so that he would have to lay across the floor. Making sure he had no dignity.

Sorry, his small size was irrelevant - I just remembered he was a very small King.
sorry to be thick Rob, but no matter how low the scaffold was, why couldn’t he kneel to have his napper chopped off?
 
It is just that the block was said to be really low to the ground meaning he had to sprawl and so stripping him of even more dignity - apparently.
 
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