The review examines Ian Ward's book by highlighting its legal and interdisciplinary features

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Book ReviewIan Ward. The Trials of Charles I, London, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 264, £ 80 Hardback, £26.99 PaperbackReviewed by Matteo Nicolini, Verona University, Verona, Italy, E-mail: matteo.nicolini@univr.ithttps://doi.org/10.1515/pol-2023-2016The Trials of Charles I examines the most significant moments, episodes, and per-sonalities that populated England in the period stretching from the English Civil Warto the 1688–1689 constitutional settlement, via King Charles I’s execution andCromwell’s Interregnum. In discussing these crucial constitutional events, the bookdisplays cross-disciplinary ambitions. The first of them relates to how law andhumanitiesmay contribute to thewriting of history, in general, and thewriting of thetrial, in particular. The book engages in this debate by adopting a pluralist stance:lying at the crossroads of law, art, literature, and social history, it addresses themanifold constitutional issues raised by the regicide of King Charles by envelopinghis trial and execution within the broader political, social, and legal context ofseventeenth-century England. In so doing, not only does it carefully assess theimmediate context of the trial, but it also sets it ‘within a larger history’: “the ‘trials’ ofCharles I”, IanWard explains, “started well before November 1648, and finished longafter; if indeed they have finished at all” (p. 4).Placing the trial against these tumultuous events is amethodological choice withwider implications, which are also related to the second cross-disciplinary ambitionof the book – namely, the “writing of history” (p. 1). Although “we are lesscomfortable with the idea that the historian” – not to mention the legal scholar – “isfree to imagine things,” themain (and compelling) argument underpinning this bookis that “all history takes narrative form, and all history is written around contin-gencies” (p. 2). This ultimately accounts for how differently the history of the trial hasbeen narrated over three and a half centuries. Such a historiographical variation isapparent in how, say, John Milton and Sir Edward Hyde portrayed the turbulentstage which is Stuart England. Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) and ADefence of the People of England (1651), and Hyde’sHistory of the Rebellion (publishedposthumous in 1704) are cases in point: although they possess flashes of revisionism,these writings claim historical “authenticity,” inasmuch as their authors were both“part of the history they write” and “part of the history about which they write” (p.198; see also pp. 130–137 and 175–176). This way of writing has had a long-lastingimpact on later histories of the trial. Its legacy is manifest in the subsequent gen-erations of historians, politicians, and writers that have been writing (and rework-ing) the history of seventeenth-century England.Pólemos 2023; 17(2): 431–434The third ambition of the book refers to how history should be digested andexplained. In a text like Ward’s, cross-disciplinarity extends over the recount of thetrial, which is thoroughly shaped by the context and its related socio-political vari-ables. The book is therefore a larger history – but still a history – of the trial. In anunceasing interaction between law and history, it delivers a fresco where the grandnarrative of seventeenth-century England is enriched by the pétites histoires of itsprotagonists.From a legal perspective, the way Ian Ward masters seventeenth-centuryEnglish history has threefold implications. The law is, first and foremost, the contextwithin which the trial takes place. The trial is, no doubt, a legal event. It is, I daresay,the culmination of the conflict around the nature of kingship that had saturated theEnglish politico-legal landscape in the first half of the seventeenth century. Wardperfectly epitomises it in chapter 1 (The Casebook of Sir Edward Coke), which beginsby illustrating the divine right of kings as theorised by James I in The Trew Law ofFree Monarchies (1598) and Basilikon Doron (1599). James’s view of kingship wasjudicially challenged by Sir Edward Coke, the Jacobean Lord Chief Justice and authorof the Reports. In his casebook, several cases touched on matters of kingship, oftenmarking the “opening of Coke’s ‘offensive’ against the jurisprudence of ‘divine right’”(p. 14). Ward peruses, among the others, the Case of Proclamation (1611), Prohibitionsdel Roy (1607), the Case of Commendams (1616), the Case of the Five Knights (1627),which led to drafting the Petitions of Rights (1628). In revitalising the ancientcommon-law constitution, these legal materials constituted a toolbox of constitu-tional arguments which King Charles I would hear, again and again, in WestminsterHall during the trial in January 1649.No doubt, the trial was a legal event; yet, Ward argues, “it was also somethingmore”. If I understand him correctly, it was also a spectacular event, where the lawbecame performance. This feature is explored in chapter 2 (The Triumphs of KingCharles I), which focuses on the person and kingship of Charles Stuart. The chapterdelivers a thorough account of the King’s conciliar rule (1629–1640), as well as of thevices and virtues of his court and of his Church, not to mention his catastrophicdefeats of the 1640s. “Plenty more trials, in court, on the battlefield, in Parliament”(p. 8). But, Ward continues, the period also “chimed with the idea of monarchy asspectacle” (p. 41). With the skill of a talented social (and legal) historian, Ward leadsus through the King’s passions: paintings, literature, fashion, Court-masque, and his(as well as Archbishop Laud’s) gusto for Romish rituals and Popish refurbishments ofProtestant cathedrals and churches. Chapter 3 thus delivers what we might label anaesthetic of kingship and political power, which sharply contrasts with the state ofEnglish public finances and the religious, political, and economic grievances of hisProtestant subjects.432 Book ReviewIn chapter 3 (The Trial of Charles Stuart), Ward perfectly stages the idea of thelaw as performance. The judicial proceedings leading to the regicide are arrangedtheatrically (and dramatically). Particularly when it comes to the King. As amanwholoved theatre, Charles knew how to act, dress, and impress his audience. He was aman, in sum, able to take advantage of the stage. What strikes the reader is that the“King’s gambit” (p. 102), asWard articulates it, extendedwell beyond the trial. With abit of “early-day revisionism” (p. 111), several pamphlets started circulating imme-diately after the regicide with the aim of impressing a people orphan of theirmonarch. Monumentum Regale, A Handerkerchief for Loyal Mourners, and EikonBasilike lead us to conjecture the extent of Charles’s involvement in their writing anddeliberate distribution in the aftermath of his death. “Charles as actor as well asMartyr” exhibited an impressive ability to re-write the past and write the future ofEngland (p. 114).Together with the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, and theGlorious Revolution, the King’s indictment, trial, and beheading represented one ofthe major constitutional events that marked England’s jurisgenerative transitionfrom a monarchy to an impracticable republic – and back again to a restoredmonarchical regime in 1660. As a jurisgenerative process, it was particularly bloody;a new constitutional system had to be reinvented, the shaping of which required agood dose of imagination. Both legal and literary. Which brings us to the law asnarrative. Chapter 4 (Milton’s War) projects the trial and the regicide into theCommonwealth and the troublesome Cromwell’s succession up to the Restoration.The major character of this chapter is John Milton. His The Tenure of Kings andMagistrates represented the first “defence” of the nascent Republic. He was aware,Ward surmises, of the draft version of Eikon Basilike. “Milton knew what waspending; an appeal in the case of ‘King Charles the Martyr’” (p. 131). Likewise, Mil-ton’s Eikonoclasteswas published to rebut each chapter of Eikon Basilike. Its register,however, was completely different from that of The Tenure. Calm and engaging, theformer; full of rage and anger, the latter: it was “personal and vicious, written todestroy an enemy who simply refused to die” (p. 135). The ghost of Charles washaunting the Republic. The diehard king was able to resist even A Defence of thePeople of England (1651), i.e. Milton’s third defence of the Republic; and, ultimately,the royal ghost defeated it and restored the monarchy.Beginning with King James II’s coronation, chapter 5 (The Histories of EdwardHyde) brings the readers back and forth. They are brought forth, inasmuch as itexamines the writing of the history of the trial, carefully perusing how it wasperceived and staged well beyond the Reformation. At the same time, it brings usback to the main ambition of the book, that is, the “writing of history”. It does so byintroducing Sir Edward Hyde, the restoration Lord Chancellor and author of theHistory of the Rebellion. Again, the pendulum swings between history as a narrativeBook Review 433written around contingencies and credibility. Credibility, I daresay, relies on the artof “trimming”, i.e. of shirking the “extremities”, since the “truth for themost part liesin the middle” (p. 168). The book is populated with trimmers, i.e. authors that arehappy to reshape history. Hyde, Marvell, Burke, but also Coke and Milton felt theneed to believe that they would be believed. What they did, Ward puts it, “is not, inthe end, that different from what any other story-teller does” (p. 2).The book is an intriguing journey that makes us critically rethink constitutionalhistory and political thought, but it is also about the way these are written – or, as Ihave been upholding through this review –, contextualised, performed, and narrated.The quest for veracity and credibility is, probably, the most human way to come toterms with the uncomfortable fact that a King was actually executed. This, as Wardexplains, had noticeable impact on how subsequent histories presented Charles I.There is no unique strategy when it comes to writing the history of the trials. IanWard decides to write them not only “in prose, but in poetry and performance” also,making it “a cultural event as much as a jurisprudential. And a spiritual” (p. 8).The Trials of Charles I is therefore an essential contribution to the cross-disciplinaryambitions of law and humanities. The book provides anyone researching this fieldwith a further strategic device, i.e. the staging of the law in broader society,avoiding bracketing it for the sake of our historiographical complacency. Exam-ining the law in terms of context, performance, and narrative is thus an importantcontribution, as well as one that should encourage us to read and write history – allhistories – as “a particular and prejudiced set of histories; like any other” (p. 8).434 Book Review

Ian Ward. The Trials of Charles I, London, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 264

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Ian Ward. The Trials of Charles I, London, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 264

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