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Hello welcome to the Rest Is History.

Just before 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the 30th of January 1649, Charles Stuart, King

of England, Scotland and Ireland walked out onto a platform erected outside the

Banqueting House in Whitehall in London.

He read a short speech to his attendants, he knelt and placed his head on the block,

and a moment later the axe came down and he was dead.

It was one of the most extraordinary moments in British and Indian European history, the

public trial and execution of an anointed monarch for crimes against the rights and liberties

of the people, and almost 400 years on it still arouses remarkably strong feelings.

So Tom Holland, are you a devotee of Charles King and Marta?

Would you think the man of blood got what he deserved?

I will, I'm very much with Thomas Fairfax, Lord Fairfax, who commanded the army in the

time a massive fence sitter.

You're a Liberal Democrat on this.

So basically, I think Charles was a terrible King.

He was obduret, he refused to negotiate, he pushed England into a second bout of civil

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