H-Albion review by Michael B. Young of Ian Ward, The Trials of Charles I (pasted)

 

Young on Ward, 'The Trials of Charles I'

Ward, Ian. The Trials of Charles I. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. 254 pp. $110.00 (cloth), ISBN 9781350024977.$36.95 (paper), ISBN 9781350025141. 

Reviewed by Michael B. Young (Illinois Wesleyan University (emeritus))
Published on H-Albion (September, 2023)
Commissioned by Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth (Red Deer Polytechnic)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=59257

Ian Ward has written several books merging cultural history with legal and constitutional history. Here he turns his attention to the trials of Charles I—the metaphorical trials and tribulations of his early years on the throne, his actual trial before a revolutionary tribunal in 1649, and the repeated retrying of his case in subsequent literature. Readers eager to see if Ward has anything new to say about the actual trial will have to hold their breath for a while because the actual trial does not begin until page 95, almost halfway through the book; and it must be said that those first ninety-five pages of background are surprisingly conventional. An opening chapter pits the famous jurist Sir Edward Coke against King James I. Coke is critical to the story because he played a central role in fostering the idea of an ancient or fundamental constitution that empowered the common law to the point that it challenged royal authority. Ward does not lionize Coke, however, describing him as a "self-promoting fantasist," "courtroom bully," "ill-tempered boor," and "rubbish dad" (pp. 6, 7, 27). King James fares no better. In words that echo Sir Anthony Weldon's crude caricature, Ward tells us that James "was as paranoid as he was dribbly and vain" (p. 20). Things heat up when Charles becomes king in the second chapter and Coke becomes the "grudge-bearing jurist" who was "in cahoots with" Parliament seeking "revenge" (pp. 30, 34, 36). Ward then proceeds to march the reader past all the familiar milestones along the high road to civil war. Yes, Ward does update some details, adopting, for example, Mark Kishlansky's reinterpretation of "The Five Knights Case." And he does add some cultural nuance to the story. For example, he discusses Charles's fondness for a baroque aesthetic that was associated in the public mind with Roman Catholicism; and he examines the portraits of Charles and his family painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck (pp. 40-45). But these examples are merely the tip of the iceberg already exposed by cultural historians like Kevin Sharpe and his successors. Intriguing subtitles promise more colorful fare but are followed by rather conventional assessments of major characters. "The case of the notorious whores" is about William Prynne. "The case of the red-faced prelate" is about Archbishop William Laud. "The case of the fainting farmers" is about ship money. And "Black Tom's case" is about Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. All these cases are revised with the latest research and told with verve, but they are nonetheless familiar terrain (pp. 45-64).

What caused the civil war that ended in the trial and execution of the king? In addition to Charles's apparent attraction to a Catholic sensibility, evil counselors, and arbitrary taxation already mentioned, Ward assembles the usual suspects. Metaphors of divine right "had begun to lose their charm" (p. 13). Charles relied too much on Queen Henrietta Maria's advice, "especially when it was wrong" (p. 43). The High Church innovations of Laud smacked of popery. Ship money and other high-handed policies during the Personal Rule generated a backlash and cultivated a "habit of disobedience" (pp. 49-59). But most of all, Charles brought ruin upon himself. He had a tendency to pick "the wrong fights" and "to keep making the same mistakes" (pp. 30, 33, 74). He was prone to making "the wrong call" and "rotten decisions" (pp. 74, 86). The capture and publication of Charles's personal correspondence, the so-called Cabinet letters, confirmed his adversaries' impression that he was not only a "habitual liar" but "vain and deceitful, and a loser," destroying overnight the "last vestige of trust" (p. 70). Charles's untrustworthiness made it impossible to negotiate in good faith with him; it proved his fatal flaw. There is little subtlety or revisionism here. Ward's prose style is strikingly original, but his conclusions are not. As Whig historians argued ages ago, in Charles's case, character was destiny. Meanwhile, other important factors receive short shrift in Ward's account. Of course it would be unreasonable to expect him to explore in detail all the factors that contributed to the king's downfall. But he could have devoted less space to subjects like Civil War battles and the "dreams of Lizzie Poole" in order to give greater attention to subjects like the role of John Pym, the Irish Rebellion, and the crucial alliance forged between the Scots and certain English noblemen amounting to what John Adamson called "the noble revolt" in his eponymous book (2007).

That brings us to Charles's actual trial and execution, a story that has been told often and well by many others. Ward does not contribute new legal or constitutional insights on these subjects. But his writing style is especially well suited to evoke the high drama of those momentous events. He vividly describes the dilemma of the planners who drafted a "mutant treason charge," arranged the staging for their "production," then saw it brilliantly sabotaged by "a lead that went rogue" (pp. 99, 102).

What makes Ward's book most worthwhile, however, is his analysis of the events following the king's execution. It is his analysis of the subsequent metaphorical "trials" of Charles that rewards and fascinates the reader. Charles proved to be "an enemy who simply refused to die" (p. 135). In the final three chapters of his book, Ward carries his narrative of events through the Interregnum, Restoration, and beyond. He augments the political narrative with many references to high and low culture, including the popularity of Eikon Basilike, the proliferation of newspapers, and the growth of coffee houses. More importantly, though, Ward focuses his attention again and again on authors who struggled to make sense of Charles's execution, to retry the king in their minds and their writings, to justify or condemn the horrific act of regicide. It is difficult to express here in a few words how evocative and haunting these final chapters are. We see, for example, the parliamentary general Sir Thomas Fairfax, who avoided signing the king's death warrant and retreated to his country estate where, Ward hints, he dwelt on second thoughts about the ghastly event he had helped to make possible (pp. 111-117). We see most poignantly the poet John Milton. No one during the Interregnum "had worked harder to justify the killing" of the king. When Cromwell failed to establish a lasting republic and the monarchy was restored, Milton was profoundly disillusioned and "the despair consumes" him (pp. 144-147). In the end, Milton, "Eyeless in Gaza," wrote his three great epic poems, including Samson Agonistes, a work of "political theology" haunted by the "spectre of Charles Stuart," deploring the return of a people to "servitude," people who "love bondage more than liberty" (pp. 154-156). Citing the admiring words of Andrew Marvell, Ward observes that other poets "had sold their pens, if not their souls," but not Milton, who died still "a hero, still a republican, still a regicide" (p. 157). For Sir Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, it was more complicated. Driven into exile, reflecting on his political career and the monumental events he had witnessed, Clarendon acknowledged that Charles had many faults, one of them being his disinclination to follow good advice, particularly Clarendon's. But in the end Clarendon praised Charles as the "worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best Christian" (p. 178). The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes remembered Charles similarly as "the same saintly if rather dithery prince" (p. 183).

Ward gives briefer attention to several later authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who preferred to dodge the hard questions by forgetting about Charles altogether. Foremost among these was the political philosopher Edmund Burke. Alarmed by the French Revolution, Burke represented the English as more sensible and less violent than the French. He achieved this effect by focusing exclusively on the "bloodless" Glorious Revolution of 1688, conveniently forgetting the earlier bloody revolution that culminated in regicide (p. 192). Dodging the horrors of the 1640s to concentrate instead on the glories of 1688 became a "familiar Whig feint" (p. 194). Meanwhile, the less said about Charles the better. If the subject of the regicide positively had to be addressed, then the consensus emerged that it was repulsive but right, a cruel necessity, best forgotten. Ward ends his literary analysis abruptly with a few quick references to various Victorian authors.

No review of this book would be complete without some attention to Ward's distinctive writing style. His grammatically complete sentences are followed on innumerable occasions by short phrases or fragments resembling posts on social media. Like this. Artful or jarring? Maybe both. He identifies with authors who are not "so concerned that the story they tell must be coherent" (p. 2). This leads him to interrupt and disrupt the chronology of his narrative, repeatedly putting the cart before the horse. For example, he executes Charles on pages 78-81, then resurrects him later for his trial on pages 95-108. At the top of page 81 he beheads Charles in 1649, then proceeds on the same page "back to June 1645," then "Forward again, to summer 1647." He also has an annoying habit of telling the reader, nearly fifty times, that he will have more to say about a particular event or person later. At the end of the book he relates a charming story about the respective treatment of bronze statues of Charles and Cromwell outside Westminster during World War II; Charles was shipped to safety in the countryside while Cromwell was left to face the Blitz. Then he blunts this terrific ending by adding two more leftover pages of musings about Clarendon and the writing of history. Yet, on the positive side, as acknowledged earlier, Ward's writing style is vivid, entertaining, and engaging. Moreover, he has digested and synthesized an enormous number of primary and secondary sources; and he enriches his own prose with an astonishing number of quotations from contemporary sources. One suspects that younger readers will especially enjoy Ward's style much more than the stuffy style that is usually found in scholarly monographs. Moreover, Ward's dramatic prose and rich analysis should ultimately win over even the most traditional reader, especially the evocative and deeply affecting final chapters. Like the authors surveyed by Ward who kept retrying Charles in print, contemporary readers will put down this book more or less haunted by the memory of King Charles and his execution, still putting the long-dead king on trial.

Citation: Michael B. Young. Review of Ward, Ian. The Trials of Charles I. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. September, 2023.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=59257

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