Charles I

Charles I: Regicide and Republicanism

On a cold January morning in 1649 Charles I stepped out onto a scaffold in Whitehall and into history, seen by some as a tyrant, by others as a martyr. But how far was the intellectual climate of mid-17th-century England ready for the republic that followed? Sarah Barber presents the latest thinking.

Charles I

Richard Cust reassesses the Stuart monarch's political style.

Commemorating Charles I - King and Martyr?

The way in which the church commemoration of King Charles I's 1649 execution became a potent instrument in the political war of words after the Restoration is examined, and the history of the king's execution and the clergy's promotion of the event are discussed.

Charles I Societies

Richard Cavendish looks at all things Stuart in the month when Charles I lost his head.

'All My Birds Have Flown'

Dame Veronica Wedgwood turns to one of the great set pieces of English history – Charles I's January 1642 attempts to settle his differences with Parliament by the attempted arrest of five MPs.

Why did Charles I fight the Civil War?

Conrad Russell finds that it is easier to understand why sheer frustration may have driven Charles to fight than to understand why the English gentry might have wanted to make a revolution against him.