View of the west side of the Banqueting House, Whitehall: from an engraving by Terasson, dated 1713. It is believed that Charles came out through the window above which a crown is marked.
23. The High Court of Justice. 1649.—On January 1, 1649, the purged House proposed to appoint a High Court of Justice to try Charles, but the Lords refused to take part in the act. On the 4th the Commons declared that the people were, under God, the source of all just power, and that the House of Commons, being chosen by the people, formed the supreme power in England, having no need of either king or House of Lords. Never was constitutional pedantry carried further than when this declaration was issued by a mere fragment of a House which, even if all its members had been present, could only claim to have represented the people some years before. On January 6 a special High Court of Justice was constituted by the mutilated House of Commons alone, for the trial of the king. On January 19 Charles was brought up to Westminster. Only the sternest opponents of Charles would consent to sit on the Court which tried him. Of 135 members named, only 67 were present when the trial began. Fairfax was amongst those appointed, but he absented himself, and when his name was called, his wife cried out, "He is not here, and will never be; you do wrong to name him."
Execution of King Charles I., January 30, 1649: from a contemporary broadside.
24. The King's Trial and Execution. 1649.—Charles's accusers had on their side the discredit which always comes to those who, using force, try to give it the appearance of legality. Charles had all the credit of standing up for the law, which, in his earlier life, he had employed to establish absolutism. He refused to plead before the Court, on the ground that it had no jurisdiction over a king. His assailants fell back on the merest technicalities. Instead of charging him with the intrigues to bring foreign armies into England, of which he had been really guilty, they accused him of high treason against the nation, because, forsooth, he had appeared in arms against his subjects in the first Civil War. The Court, as might have been expected, passed sentence against him, and, on January 30, he was beheaded on a scaffold in front of his own palace at Whitehall.