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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England

Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649[a]) was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.

From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. After his defeat in 1645, he surrendered to a Scottish force that eventually handed him over to the English Parliament. Charles refused to accept his captors’ demands for a constitutional monarchy, and temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, Charles forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army had consolidated its control over England. Charles was tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared. In 1660, the English Interregnum ended when the monarchy was restored to Charles’s son, Charles II.

Charles was moved to Hurst Castle at the end of 1648, and thereafter to Windsor Castle.[248] In January 1649, the Rump House of Commons indicted him on a charge of treason, which was rejected by the House of Lords.[249] The idea of trying a king was a novel one.[250] The Chief Justices of the three common law courts of England – Henry Rolle, Oliver St John and John Wilde – all opposed the indictment as unlawful.[251] The Rump Commons declared itself capable of legislating alone, passed a bill creating a separate court for Charles’s trial, and declared the bill an act without the need for royal assent.[252] The High Court of Justice established by the Act consisted of 135 commissioners, but many either refused to serve or chose to stay away.[253] Only 68 (all firm Parliamentarians) attended Charles’s trial on charges of high treason and “other high crimes” that began on 20 January 1649 in Westminster Hall.[254] John Bradshaw acted as President of the Court, and the prosecution was led by the Solicitor General, John Cook.[255]

Charles was accused of treason against England by using his power to pursue his personal interest rather than the good of the country.[256] The charge stated that he, “for accomplishment of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented”, and that the “wicked designs, wars, and evil practices of him, the said Charles Stuart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation.”[256] Reflecting the modern concept of command responsibility,[257] the indictment held him “guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages and mischiefs to this nation, acted and committed in the said wars, or occasioned thereby.”[258] An estimated 300,000 people, or 6% of the population, died during the war.[259]

...The court, by contrast, challenged the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and proposed that “the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern ‘by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise’.”[263]

At the end of the third day, Charles was removed from the court,[264] which then heard over 30 witnesses against the king in his absence over the next two days, and on 26 January condemned him to death. The following day, the king was brought before a public session of the commission, declared guilty and sentenced.[265] Fifty-nine of the commissioners signed Charles’s death warrant.[266]

Charles’s decapitation was scheduled for Tuesday, 30 January 1649. Two of his children remained in England under the control of the Parliamentarians: Elizabeth and Henry. They were permitted to visit him on 29 January, and he bid them a tearful farewell.[267]

He walked under guard from St James’s Palace, where he had been confined, to the Palace of Whitehall, where an execution scaffold was erected in front of the Banqueting House.[270] Charles was separated from spectators by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech reached only those with him on the scaffold.[271] He blamed his fate on his failure to prevent the execution of his loyal servant Strafford: “An unjust sentence that I suffered to take effect, is punished now by an unjust sentence on me.”[272] He declared that he had desired the liberty and freedom of the people as much as any, “but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government ... It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.”[273] He continued, “I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.”[274]

At about 2 p.m.,[275] Charles put his head on the block after saying a prayer and signalled the executioner when he was ready by stretching out his hands; he was then beheaded with one clean stroke.[276] According to observer Philip Henry, a moan “as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again” rose from the assembled crowd,[277] some of whom then dipped their handkerchiefs in the king’s blood as a memento.[278]

The executioner was masked and disguised, and there is debate over his identity. The commissioners approached Richard Brandon, the common hangman of London, but he refused, at least at first, despite being offered £200. It is possible he relented and undertook the commission after being threatened with death, but there are others who have been named as potential candidates, including George Joyce, William Hulet and Hugh Peters.[279] The clean strike, confirmed by an examination of the king’s body at Windsor in 1813,[280] suggests that the execution was carried out by an experienced headsman.[281]

It was common practice for the severed head of a traitor to be held up and exhibited to the crowd with the words “Behold the head of a traitor!”[282] Although Charles’s head was exhibited,[283] the words were not used, possibly because the executioner did not want his voice recognised.[282] On the day after the execution, the king’s head was sewn back onto his body, which was then embalmed and placed in a lead coffin.[284]
Cromwell was said to have visited Charles’s coffin, sighing “Cruel necessity!” as he did so.[285] The story was depicted by Delaroche in the nineteenth century.
Another of Delaroche’s paintings, Charles I Insulted by Cromwell’s Soldiers, is an allegory for later events in France and the mocking of Christ.[286]

The commission refused to allow Charles’s burial at Westminster Abbey, so his body was conveyed to Windsor on the night of 7 February.[287] He was buried in the Henry VIII vault in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in private on 9 February 1649.[288] The king’s son, Charles II, later planned for an elaborate royal mausoleum to be erected in Hyde Park, London, but it was never built.[128]