Charles I
Carolus I
King of England · King of Scotland · King of Ireland
1600 – 1649
Biography
His belief in the divine right of kings, his refusal to summon parliaments for eleven years, and his marriage to a Catholic French princess set him on a collision course with the political nation. The Bishops' Wars in Scotland, the Long Parliament, and finally the English Civil War followed in unbroken succession. Defeated, captured, tried by a special tribunal, he was beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall in January 1649 — the only English monarch ever publicly executed by his own people.
Events
On 30 January 1649, Charles I was beheaded on a scaffold erected outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall — the only English king ever publicly executed by his own subjects. Defeated in two civil wars, refused parliamentary compromise, and convicted of high treason by a tribunal of fifty-nine commissioners (the Rump Parliament had voted away the House of Lords specifically to bring him to trial), he wore two shirts to avoid shivering on the cold morning lest the crowd mistake it for fear.
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