Winston Churchill on Charles I of England

“By the end of 1648 it was all over. Cromwell was Dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganized, London overawed. King Charles, at Carisbrooke Castle, where the donkey treads the water wheel, was left to pay the bill. It was mortal.”

“A strange destiny had engulfed this King of England. None had resisted with more untimely stubbornness the movement of his age. He had been in his heyday the convinced opponent of all we now call our Parliamentary liberties. Yet as misfortunes crowded upon him he increasingly became the physical embodiment of the liberties and traditions of England. His mistakes and wrong deeds had arisen not so much from personal cravings for arbitrary power as from the conception of kingship to which he was born and which had long been the settled custom of the land. In the end he stood against an army which had destroyed all Parliamentary government, and was about to plunge England into a tyranny at once more irresistible and more petty than any seen before or since.”

“Plainly the fruit of the victory that could most easily be gathered was the head of the king. True, he had never moved from Carisbrooke, but was he not the mainspring of the whole of this vast movement of England against the Army, its rule, even its pay? Was he not the pivot upon which all public opinion turned? Did he not embody all those courses which the Ironsides either hated or could not unravel? Was he not a trophy gained by march and battle? At a moment of great hesitancy in matters of government, when everything was fluid and uncertain, here was a supreme act which all could understand and upon which the Army could unite. The execution of Charles Stuart, "the Man of Blood," could alone satisfy the soldiers and enable their leaders to hold their obedience.”

“He did not flinch in any respect from the causes in which he believed. Although, no doubt, in bargainings and maneuvers with his enemies he had practised deceit and ill faith, these arose from the malignancy and ever-shifting character of the quarrel, and were amply matched upon the other side. But he never departed from his central theme either in religion or State. He adhered unswervingly to the Prayer Book of the Reformed Church and to the Episcopacy, with which he conceived Christianity was to be interwoven. By his constancy, which underlay all the shifts and turns of the tumultous and swiftly changing years, he preserved the causes by which his life was guided. He was not a martyr in the sense of one who dies for a spiritual ideal. His own kingly interests were mingled at every stage with the larger issues. Some have sought to represent him as the champion of the small or humble man against the rising money-power. This is fanciful. He cannot be claimed as the defender of English liberties, nor wholly of the English Church, but none the less he died for them, and by his death preserved them not only to his son and heir, but to our own day.”

“Thus goaded, Charles, accompanied by three or four hundred swordsmen- "Cavaliers" we may now call them- went down to the House of Commons. It was January 4, 1642. Never before had a king set foot in the Chamber. When his officers knocked at the door and it was known that he had come in person members of all parties looked upon each other in amazement. His followers beset the doors. All rose at his entry. The Speaker, William Lenthall, quitted his chair and knelt before him. The King, seating himself in the chair, after professing his goodwill to the House, demanded the surrender of indicted Members- Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazelrigg, and Strode. But a treacherous message from a lady of the Queen's Bedchamber had given Pym a timely warning. The accused Members had already embarked at Westminster steps and were safe amid the train bands and magistrates of the City. Speaker Lenthall could give no information. "I have only eyes to see and ears to hear as the House may direct," he pleaded. The King, already conscious of his mistake, cast his eyes around the quivering assembly. "I see that the birds are flown," he said lamely, and after some civil reassurances he departed at the head of his disappointed, growling adherents. But as he left the Chamber a low, long murmur of "Privilege" pursued him. To this day the Members for the City take their places on the Treasury bench at the opening of a session, in perpetual acknowledgement of the services rendered by the City in protecting the Five.”