Paperback. White title and painting on the orange cover.

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This well written book provides details of the trial of Charles I. Yes, there was little or no precedent for dethroning a monarch with a treason trial. Yes, the presiding judge, Cooke, didn’t do a good job of putting the king in his place. Yes, in many ways this was Charles Stuart’s finest hour. But, just what do you do with a king who doesn’t believe he has to keep his word because he is above the law? What do you do when you are in negotiations and find out he has agreed behind your back with a foreign country (Scotland) to launch and invasion? What do you do when he seeks mercenaries to fight his own people? To their credit Parliament didn’t take the time-honoured way out of employing a red-hot poker but sought a legal finding of guilt. There may have been no direct precedent, but then, England, unlike France, hadn’t succumbed to the Divine Right of Kings either.

Wedgwood’s approach veers to pro-Charles and I will balance it in due course with Geoffrey Robertson’s work. Nonetheless it was interesting to see she absolved Cromwell of involvement with Pride’s Purge thinking he would have preferred a more diplomatic solution to the impasse in Parliament over the king.

Dame Veronica Wedgwood was born in 1910 and educated in London, France, Germany and at Oxford University. She was awarded the Order of Merit in 1969 and died in 1997. A prolific writer, her books include THE KING’S PEACE and THE KING’S WAR also published in Penguin Classic History. Professor Sir John Plumb wrote of Dame Veronica that ‘Her gifts are splendid and altogether exceptional. She is a great craftswoman and a great writer.’