4. He was beheaded on January 30, 1649.
On January 30, 1649, Charles was led to a scaffold outside the Palace of Whitehall. Ever the showman, he asked for two shirts, because ‘the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear’. He gave a rousing final speech to the great crowd that had gathered, refusing to give in to the men who had sentenced him to death, stating that he was unafraid of death because of his fervent religious beliefs: ‘I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be’.
At two in the afternoon, he was beheaded by a single stroke. His head was lifted to the crowd, but the executioner broke with tradition by not reciting the customary lines, ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ England had killed its own king. Philip Henry, who witnessed the execution, records that the crowd unleashed a groan ‘as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again’. The terrible significance of this single man’s execution was not lost on the ordinary people, and no one quite knew what was coming next. Charles, meanwhile, was buried at Windsor Castle.
