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dc.contributor.authorBuchan, Bruce
dc.contributor.editorGabrielle Meagher
dc.date.accessioned2019-03-15T04:55:32Z
dc.date.available2019-03-15T04:55:32Z
dc.date.issued2005
dc.identifier.issn832-1526
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/134969
dc.description.abstractThe trial of King Charles I of England before the High Court of Justice in 1649 was, in essence, a political contest between a former sovereign and some of his former subjects over the rights of sovereignty. This trial has modern echoes in the repeated attempts to hold former tyrants (such as Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein), and to find ways to call current tyrants (such as Robert Mugabe), to account. This modern resonance, Geoffrey Robertson argues, invites us reconsider the subject of his book: John Cooke, the man who accepted the brief to prosecute his former King, Charles I. Throughout the 1630s, Charles faced a combative parliament dominated by MPs incensed by his heavy-handed revenue raising mechanisms, infuriated by his incompetent foreign policies, or mistrustful of his anti-reformist, ultra-orthodox position on church doctrine. Scots Presbyterians, English Puritans, and disaffected nobles within parliament—and a host of more radical groups outside it—voiced an increasingly radical opposition to royal intransigence. The initially indecisive war (1642–1646) was eventually won by parliamentary forces thanks to their New Model Army; a professional army led by commanders committed to winning a crushing military victory. For the victorious parliament however, the spoils of victory seemed uncertain. They faced a scheming king in custody keen to sow discord among the victors, an unpaid, restive army increasingly under the sway of radical republicans, and charismatic generals like Oliver Cromwell, who could use their new-found prominence as a political platform. When parliamentary moderates dithered over what to do with the King, republicans in the Army and its governing Council acted. Colonel Pride’s purge of parliamentary moderates in December 1649 delivered a majority to the radicals who favoured decisive action against their former King. Charles delayed the axeman on the scaffold with a final and memorable speech. But this action would not be summary justice, nor a quiet assassination, but a very public trial before a specially convened High Court of Justice sitting in Westminster Hall. Charles refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Court by pleading ‘not guilty’ to the charge of treason, and so, denied his moment in court, Charles delayed the axeman on the scaffold with a final and memorable speech. His cause, he claimed, had always been for the people, but definitely not for popular government (Schama 2001, p. 136). ‘A subject and a soveraign’ he famously declared, ‘are clean different things …’ (Project Canterbury n.d.).
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSchool of Economics and Political Science, University of Sydney
dc.publisher.placeSydney, Australia
dc.publisher.urihttp://www.australianreview.net/digest/2005/11/buchan.html
dc.relation.ispartofpagefrom1
dc.relation.ispartofpageto5
dc.relation.ispartofedition14 Nov, 2005
dc.relation.ispartofjournalAustralian Review of Public Affairs
dc.relation.ispartofvolume6
dc.subject.fieldofresearchPolicy and Administration
dc.subject.fieldofresearchPolitical Science
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode1605
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode1606
dc.titleTrying Times: The Life and Times of a Tyrannicide
dc.typeReport
dc.type.descriptionU2 - Reviews/Reports
dc.type.codeC - Journal Articles
dc.description.versionVersion of Record (VoR)
gro.facultyArts, Education & Law Group, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences
gro.rights.copyright© 2005 University of Sydney. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal website for access to the definitive, published version.
gro.hasfulltextFull Text
gro.griffith.authorBuchan, Bruce A.


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