Was this the most significant decade in British history?

It was a time of bewildering change. In 1649, a king was executed and a republic born. It was all over by 1660, but Britain had altered irrevocably, argues a leading historian in her brilliant new book

- By Alice Hunt

ON January 30, 1649, the English executed Charles I. Thousands gathered to watch. Kings and queens had been killed before — in a battle or bumped off in a tower — but to behead a legitimate monarch in broad daylight, in the middle of Whitehall, was extraordinary. The king was God’s representative on Earth — but they went ahead anyway.

After years of civil war and failed negotiations, Charles I had been put on trial and found guilty of being a “tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the good people of this nation”. He was sentenced to death by the “severing of his head from his body”. Fifty-nine men, including Oliver Cromwell, signed his death warrant.

When the king’s head fell he took “all Britain with him”, for Charles was king of Scotland and Ireland too. The crowd groaned. Some pushed forwards to soak up a drop of royal blood in their handkerchiefs. Even those who had fought against Charles I in the name of Parliament — such as the “brutish general” Sir Thomas Fairfax — were shaken.

Ralph Josselin, an ordinary clergyman from Essex, wept. “Fear and tremble at it, oh England,” he wrote in his diary. Fifteen-year-old Samuel Pepys, who had skipped school to watch the execution, took a different view. “The memory of the wicked shall rot,” he said. He changed his mind later, though, and eventually worked for Charles II.

The civil wars that had ravaged England, Scotland and Ireland during the 1640s did not set out to bring down the monarchy. Parliamentarians wanted Charles I to listen to Parliament, not lose his head. But the blow of the axe on that icy January day split apart the long-held idea of the sacred, untouchable monarch.