Exactly 400 years ago this month, King James I of England died and his son, King Charles I, took the throne. In 1625, no one could have foreseen the bloody end to the new reign. 

King Charles I, the second Stuart monarch of England, strongly believed in the divine right of kings. He felt that he should be able to govern as he saw fit without parliament’s interference, including raising taxes when he believed it was necessary. 

By the early 1640s, parliament refused to accept Charles’ edicts as monarch and in 1642, the English Civil War began. The second Civil War began in 1648 and would have a dire outcome for the Stuart sovereign. 

After he was captured, King Charles’s trial for high treason began on 20 January 1649. Charles maintained his innocence but by 26 January, he had been declared guilty and sentenced to execution. 

On 30 January 1649, the king was walked from St. James’s Palace where he had been held to the Banqueting House (then part of the Palace of Whitehall). A scaffold had been erected outside the hall to allow the crowds to witness his execution. 

King Charles once again maintained his innocence in his speech on the scaffold, but sadly, few were able to hear it. 

Notably, Charles was not buried in Westminster Abbey as he had planned; instead the new government had him buried at Windsor in St. George’s Chapel beside King Henry VIII.