One of the iconic moments in English history, the trial and execution of
King Charles I has yet to be studied in-depth from a contemporary legal
perspective. Professor Ian Ward brings his considerable legal and
historical acumen to bear on the particular constitutional issues raised
by the regicide of Charles, and not only analyses the unfolding of
events and their immediate historical context, but also draws out their
wider importance and legacy for the generations of historians,
politicians, and writers over the ensuing three and a half centuries.
This is a book about constitutional history and thought, but also about
the writing of constitutional history and thought and the forms they
have taken -whether as scholarship, polemics, or literary experiments -
in collective British memory. Chapters range from the events leading up
to and through the trial and execution of Charles; to their
theatricality, legality, and constitutionality; to the political
writings such as Milton's Tenure of Kings and Hobbes' Leviathan that
followed; and finally trace the various subsequent histories and trials
of Charles I that presented him either as martyr, Tory or -- in the 18th
and 19th centuries -- the Whig.
