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By Root 1219 0

records at the hearings reveals some anomalies – some of those present on 27 January did not sign, and some of those whose names appear high on the list of signatories were not, apparently, present for the condemnation on that day. There has been some technical discussion of this, and the anomalies may reflect the unreliability of the court’s attendance lists, but the simplest explanation may well be the correct one – that the death warrant was not drawn up until after the condemnation, and that signatures were collected on 29 January, the day before the King’s execution. If correct this gives plausibility to the story that the King was approached for a final time, between his condemnation and execution. The story goes that he was approached with a ‘paper book’ prepared by the army grandees, and that if he had been willing to sign it, he could have had his ‘life and some shadow of regality’. This story is usually discounted but it might be true – it was set down after the execution, when it was wistful rather than wishful thinking. It is certainly the case that the King had been approached between 27 and 29 January, since he was aware of the chosen place of execution.62

Whatever the truth of the claims about a last-minute attempt to negotiate, it is clear that some of those present for the condemnation did not sign the death warrant and that others agreed to sign the warrant only after being tracked down. Thirteen of those who signed were apparently present when the King was condemned, but not at the meeting in the Painted Chamber on 29 January when the warrant was presented. They must have been pursued for their signature subsequently. Condemnation was in all early modern proceedings a different thing from the execution of the sentence. It is reasonably likely that condemnation on 27 January, without naming the time and place of execution, had left room for a final attempt to avoid king-killing: to speak to the King with an axe to his neck, in the hope that some crucial concession might be secured in return for a pardon. When this failed too, a number of those who had been persuaded to go along with the condemnation became much less willing to see the sentence actually carried out: only fifty-nine of those present for the condemnation actually signed the death warrant.63

Much of this is guesswork, and it may be that there was more intent behind these proceedings than has been suggested here. But it is difficult to read all this as the proceedings of a military faction bent on a show-trial to be followed in short order by an execution. They seem more likely to have been elements of a negotiation, signs of a willingness to take drastic action in order to demonstrate that there was indeed a real threat to the King, despite the many reservations and hesitations among the parliamentarians, and that there was therefore some reason to try to reach a settlement.

But the pressure was certainly applied. It was later said that when the King heard that he was going to be moved from Hurst Castle to Windsor accompanied by Colonel Thomas Harrison, he feared that he would be killed at some lonely spot – it had not escaped his ears that Harrison had favoured assassination at an earlier point in negotiations. Harrison, the godly soldier who had experienced rapture at Langport, reassured the King that in fact all he had said was that justice should have no respect of persons, great or small. Harrison was a willing regicide, but not a murderer.64

At Windsor, Charles had touched for the King’s Evil, until his captors had stopped him doing so. From there he was taken to St James on the eve of formal proceedings and his conditions seem to have been much worse. Writing much later, Clarendon dwelt on the petty humiliations. No-one other than his guards had access to him, but he was never free from his guards, ‘some of whom sat up always in his bedchamber, and drank and took tobacco… nor was he suffered to go into any other room, either to say his prayers or to receive the ordinary benefits of nature, but was obliged to do both in their presence