Book Review: Killers of the King

Killers of the King:The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles Iby Charles SpencerBloomsbury Press, 2015Readers of Geoffrey Robertson's brilliant 2006 book The Tyrannicide Brief, about the John Cooke, the lawyer given the unenviable task of prosecuting England's King Charles I in 1649, will recall the horrifying fate meted out to him by King Charles's son Charles II after his Restoration to the monarchy. In the fascinating pages of his new book Killers of the King, Charles Spencer details the no less interesting – and often equally horrifying – fates of the dozens of men who brought that fateful prosecution, knowing the fate that would await them if they failed. Most of those men hadn't originally thought of capital punishment; a deposition and imprisonment along the lines of Richard II was more what they contemplated. But as Spencer writes, “The King's attitude throughout the trial made the contemplation of spilling royal blood more palatable; it was clear that, if the possibility ever arose, Charles would seek full vengeance against his enemies.”And so, for the crime of being a “tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy of the Commonwealth,” Charles was executed on 30 January 1649. His family, including his son and heir, had to wait ten years to return to power, but at that point Charles II wasted no time in hunting down the surviving men who had conspired to kill his father:

There had been around sixty regicides alive at the Restoration. In just a few days, ten of these had been dispatched. The remaining fifty were acutely aware that the fierce appetite for retribution was roaring still, and that their lives were in the gravest of danger.

In clear, very readable prose just a shade on the melodramatic side, Spencer (the ninth Earl Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana, and uncle of the future king of England) tracks the fates of these sixty regicides, with special emphasis on a handful of the most interesting and representative, from the fugitives who sought refuge in New England (“when it came to significant matters,” we're somewhat laconically informed, “the Atlantic proved no impediment to Charles II and his government”) to all those who met their grisly ends closer to home.The prescribed shape that end traditionally took was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, a process so protracted and gruesome it broke the composure of some of the men facing it – although, as Spencer points out with a clear note of appreciation, far from all of them. These were for the most part brave and conscientious traitors, people who believed they'd been doing righteous, even Biblical, work by slaying a tyrant. Although many fled and hid, many also went to their ends with resolution and even pride – and none more so than Major General Thomas Harrison, who delighted the bloodthirsty crowds with one final act of defiance toward his tormentors:

He was hanged with a short drop, to ensure no easy departure from this world, and only when the frantic thrashing had stopped was he cut down. As Harrison regained consciousness his shirt was pulled away. The executioner used his knife to cut off Harrison's genitals, which were presented to him before being tossed into a bucket. He was then held down while red-hot metal bored into his belly.It was while his innards were being burnt in front of him that Harrison summoned up his remaining strength, and swung a punch that caught the executioner off-guard. This brought an abrupt end to the major general, as he was immediately dispatched by the irate and embarrassed hangman.

Lord Spencer's narrative zeal never flags, and his knack for sniffing out all the best, most memorable anecdotes from a vast mass of historical sources is very nearly flawless. The result is an entertaining book that's also effectively disquieting, a combination its author must know well: he's a direct descendant of Charles I, but he characterizes his book as a tribute to that king's killers, who, he writes, “deserve to be remembered with respect for their sacrifices.” They could scarcely hope for a more adroit remembrance than this book.