King Charles I is beheaded in England. Civil war had raged since 1642, pitting “knights” against “roundheads” (those without the heavy curls that were fashionable among the aristocracy). The nobility was almost entirely behind the king, while the merchant bourgeoisie, artisans, and small landowners sided with Parliament. Initially, Charles I’s army prevailed, but then came the decisive intervention of Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan country gentleman, willing to do anything to combat the idolatry he identified with the Catholic religion and the king. Cromwell’s Ironsides definitively defeated the royal army in 1648 at Preston. The monarchy was abolished and a republic established, and on January 3, 1649, King Charles I was executed after being condemned by a court in accordance with the law established by Parliament. This was a revolutionary act, unique in Europe, which reverberated throughout the continent’s monarchies. But then Oliver Cromwell’s role as “Protector” would increasingly take on the characteristics of a monarch, until the restoration of the Stuarts in the person of King Charles II in 1660. The new parliament would have a strong Anglican presence, and with measures against not only Catholics, but also Quakers and Presbyterians.
