1 Jan. the commons who were left behind after Pride's purge resolved that he had committed treason by levying war 'against the parliament and kingdom of England,' and on 4 Jan. they resolved that it was unnecessary for the being of a law to have the consent of the king or of the House of Lords. On the 6th they passed a law by their own sole authority for the establishment of a high court of justice for the king's trial. On 19 Jan. Charles was brought to St. James's Palace, and on the 20th he was led to Westminster Hall to be tried. He refused to plead or to acknowledge the legality of the court [see Bradshaw, John, 1602–1659], and on the 27th was condemned to death (on questions arising out of the death-warrant, see two communications of Sir. Thoms to Notes and Queries of 6 and 13 July 1872, and the letters of Mr. R. Palgrave in the Athenæum of 22 Jan., 5 and 26 Feb. 1881). Not only was the sentence technically illegal, but on the grounds alleged it was substantially unjust. The civil war was neither a levy of arms by the king against the parliament, nor by the parliament against the king. It had been a conflict between one section of the kingdom and the other, Yet those who put Charles to death believed that they were in reality executing justice on a traitor. On 30 Jan. he was executed in front of Whitehall, His own conception of government was expressed in the speech which he delivered on the scaffold: 'For the people,' he said; 'and truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whosoever; but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in buying of government those laws by which their life and their goods that be most their own. It is not having share in government, sirs; that is nothing pertaining to them,'
[On the authorship of the Kikon Busilikē see Gauden, John. The principal source of information on the reign of Charles I is the series of State Papers in manuscript, Domestic and Foreign, preserved in the Record Office. These, however, become scanty after the outbreak of the civil war, and may be supplemented by the Tanner and Clarendon MSS. in the Bodleian Library, and, as far as Ireland is concerned. from the Carte MSS. in the same library. There is also much manuscript material in the British Museum. The despatches of foreign ambassadors should be consulted, of many of which there are copies either in the Museum Library or in the Record Office. Selections from the Clarendon MSS. are printed in the Clarendon State Papers. Extracts from the Tanner MSS. are printed very imperfectly in Cary's Memorials of the Civil War. Portions of the Carte MSS. appear in Carte's Life of Ormonde, in Carte's Original Letters, and in Mr. J. T. Gilbert's editions of the Aphorismical Discovery and of Belling's History of the Irish Confederation. Laud's Works should be consulted for the ecclesiastical and Strafford's Letters for the political government of Charles, whose own Works have also been published. Elliot's speeches and letters are printed in Forster's Life of Eliot, while the Letters and Papers of Robert Baillie give the Scottish side of the struggle, and Miss Hickson, in her Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, prints a large number of the depositions taken in relation to the Ulster massacre. Rushworth's Collection is full of state papers, but the narrative part is chiefly taken from the pamphlets of the day, most of which will be found in the great series of Civil War Tracts in the British Museum. Papers relating to Rupert's campaigns are given in Warburton's Memoirs of Rupert and the Cavaliers; and others connected with Fairfax in Johnson and Bell's Memorial of the Civil War. Among contemporary or nearly contemporary writings are: Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion: May's History of the Long Parliament; Hornet's Lives of the Dukes of Hamilton; Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Expedition to the Isle of Ré; the Memoirs of Holles; the Memoirs of Ludlow; the Historical Disconraus of Sir E. Walter; Sprigge's Anglia Rediviva; Herbert's Memoirs of the Two Last Tears of … King Charles I; Heylyn's Cyprianns Anglicanus; and Hacket's Life of Williams. The Life of Colonel Hutchinson and the Lives of the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle may also be studied with advantage. Whitelocke's Memorials contain a certain amount of personal information dispersed among short notes of events of loss value. Those who wish to pursue the subject further may consult the references in Massons Life of Milton; and in Gardiner's History of England. 1603–42, and his History of the Great Civil War.]
CHARLES II (1630–1686), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, second son of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, was born at St. James's Palace, London, 29 May 1630, and baptised by Laud, bishop of London, 7 July 1630, Louis XIII of France being one of his godfathers. In 1161 he was entrusted to the care of the Countess of Dorset (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660–1, 341); the married name of his nurse, who according to Clarendon exercised a baleful influence upon him, was Wyndham (Rebellion, v. 153; cf. Cal. 1661–2, pp. 552-3). As a child he seems to have had vivacity and a will of his own (see his letters in Ellis, 1st series, iii. 286, 287). About 1635 an establishment was provided for him as Prince of Wales, with William Cavendish (1592–1676), earl of Newcastle [q. v.], as governor, and Dr. Brian Duppa [q. v.] as tutor. In 1639 he broke his arm and passed through a serious illness. In the following year, when a design is said to have been temporarily entertained of committing the charge of him to
