The King's Revenge by Michael Walsh, Don Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

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     Cambridge before falling foul of royalist interests and being sacked for lecturing on Tacitus and the difference between legal
     and tyrannical monarchy. 2 John Cook was a young lawyer who had made a name for himself in Dublin before becoming a reforming barrister in London. Dorislaus
     and Cook would make legal history by drafting the charges against the king. In essence, they would bring the first charges
     for war crimes against a head of state. 3
    Unless it was in use for official events, Westminster Hall was open every day as a marketplace for lawyers and booksellers
     and their clients. On the morning of 9 January, the hall was filled with the usual crowds of barristers, litigants and browsers
     at bookstalls. They were stopped in their tracks by a shrill trumpet blast. Through the north door entered six trumpeters
     and two companies of cavalry. At their head was the sergeant-at-arms, Edward Dendy, who declared that a special High Court
     of Justice was to be convened to try the king.
    Dendy then rode to the City, where at the Old Exchange and in Cheapside, he bellowed out the proclamation again. He went on
     to St Paul’s churchyard where he informed the usual throngs of booksellers, idlers and pickpockets of the trial, accompanied
     this time by no fewer than ten trumpeters.
    Following Dendy’s exertions, the court sat again on 10 January. Once more, most of the commissioners failed to appear. The
     most noticeable of the absentees this time was Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had attended the first session. Fairfax had made an
     extraordinary journey in his thirty-six years, from scion of a Yorkshire landowning family to head of the parliamentary army
     in two Civil Wars. Having signed the army remonstrance that named Charles as ‘the capital and grand author of our troubles’
     who should be tried for ‘treason, blood and mischief’, 4 and gone along with the purge of Parliament, when it came to the trial itself he discovered he was too much of a man of the
     old social order to see his king tried for treason. 5 As his colleagues prepared for the final act, he silently left the stage.
    Fairfax was far from the only judge absent from the Painted Chamber on 10 January. Of the possible 153, only 45 were present.
     Among the other absentees was John Bradshaw, a lawyer, who had yet to show up at all. In spite of this, the court elected
     him its Lord President and summonsed him to attend. The court was anxious about filling the post; normally it would have been
     taken by the Lord Chief Justice, Oliver St John, except that he, too, had declined to serve. Of those who did serve as judges,
     the numbers ebbed andflowed throughout the trial. Some, like Fairfax, appeared only once, while others attended every session.
    The court now appointed a committee to consider how the king’s trial would be managed. Its membership included names that
     would feature prominently in another treason trial eleven years in the future – John Lisle, Nicholas Love, Gilbert Millington,
     Augustine Garland, Harry Marten, Thomas Challoner, Sir John Danvers, Sir Henry Mildmay.
    At the next sitting, Bradshaw reluctantly put in an appearance. He asked for time to think about the honour being bestowed.
     After a further day of deliberation, he agreed to accept. The court appointed more committees to oversee various aspects of
     the trial; one was notable for being entirely composed of army colonels – among them men who would play a large part in all
     that was yet to pass: Edmund Ludlow, John Hutchinson, John Carew and Thomas Pride.
    In the meantime, the committee that liaised with Dorislaus and Cook over the charges was progressing slowly. A new name was
     added to its membership – that of Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell. Two days later, the committee had ‘perfected the charge’.
     The court ordered that Cook, now promoted to solicitor-general, should ‘on behalf of the people of England, exhibit and bring
     into