The

The On a cold winter's day in 1649, Tuesday the 30th of January, to be precise, a crowd assembled outside the Palace of Whitehall in London,

when execution scaffold had been erected in front of the banqueting house.

They were about to witness one of the most extraordinary events in British history, the execution of their king, Charles I.

Other monarchs had been murdered by rivals or slain in battle,

but never before had a king or queen of England been put on trial,

accused of treason against England by using his power to pursue his personal interest rather than the good of the country.

The very idea would have been simply unimaginable until it happened for real.

At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 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 and so started a unique

constitutional experiment, the one and only republic in England's history. Welcome to a history of Europe, Key Battles Podcast, the English Civil War, 1642 to 1651.

The set of events around this period of political instability has divided posterity, not only its significance and impact on the nation, but its naming.

From the period of the restoration in 1660, when the Republic ended until the 19th century, while Royalist and Tory perspectives dominated, the common phrase was the rebellion, or the Great Rebellion, or also the troubles.

The same perspective produced the phrase, the interregnum, to represent the Republic as a deviation from the healthy norm of monarchy.

In the Victorian age, the balance of public sympathy swung from the King's cause to the Parliaments, and a presentation of the events, not as an aberration,

but as a stage in the country's progress towards the present.

Then in the 20th century, the term English Revelation cast it as the first modern revelation,

the precursor of the French or Russian revelations.

The present term of civil war stresses the internal ruptures which occurred across English society.

Some historians today would prefer the British civil wars to push back against the Anglo-centricity that permeated the study of British history in the 20th century and still often today.

It is true that the histories of the kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland are inextricably linked with the story of the Civil War.

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