Charles I executed for treason against Parliament
After losing the English Civil War and being captured, Charles I was tried by a High Court of Justice on charges of treason against the people of England — a legal innovation, since the king had always been the source of treason law, not its object. He was convicted by a narrow margin, sentenced to death, and beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall on January 30, 1649. It was the first time in European history that a reigning monarch had been executed by his own subjects through a legal process rather than a coup.
Charles refused to plead, arguing no court had the authority to try an anointed king. Oliver Cromwell signed the death warrant third. The monarchy was restored eleven years later under Charles II, but the precedent — that a monarch could be held legally accountable — was permanent.
05 · Social Contract
In roughly two centuries, European philosophers worked out a new account of where authority came from. Hobbes said the sovereign's power was granted by a tacit contract individuals signed to escape the war of all against all. Locke said the contract was conditional and revocable, and that the governed retained the right to dissolve any government that broke its terms. Rousseau said legitimate authority was the general will of the people themselves, not any individual monarch. Each argument sharpened the previous one. By 1789 the conclusions had been put on parchment and fired out of muskets on two continents.
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