Trial of Charles I

I listened to the podcast on the trial of Charles I. I found it rather interesting because of what was being done in the trial. No time before had a king of England been put on trial, the people who put Charles of trial were doing something that had never been done before. Because of this the trail seemed to be made up as it went, the podcast suggests this happened. The judges were continuously retreating into their chambers to discuss what was happening. After listening to the podcast I wonder how Charles felt about the whole process that was going on. When he walked into the trial he saw that the judges had been made up of people who opposed him.

Something Charles did that I thought was clever was refusing to plea. He refused to plea ” guilty” or ” not guilty” because he did not believe the judges had the authority  to try the king for treason.  This is because treason is going against the king, by trying the king without the king’s permission. I believe in Charles’ mind he did not believe they could do anything serious to him. However, he was wrong because the jury did decide he was guilty of treason and sentenced him to death.

Another interesting thing I learned from the podcast was that Charles waited for four hours to be executed. This is because Parliament was scrabbling around trying to fill out paper work so that no one could take the throne after Charles was executed. This must have been interesting time for Charles, he knew he was close to death and he just had to sit  until they were ready to kill him.

This was a very interesting time in English history and it was interesting to learn about.