This is John Batchelor continuing my conversation with Professor Jonathan Healy, his book The

Blazing World, A New History of Revolutionary England 1603 to 1689. The regicide of killing Charles the 1st. We didn't just

kill him in a corner. What an explanation. Listen to Jonathan Healy describe how they approached

not only the detention, but the killing of the king, the establishment of a republic, the revolution that comes to America eventually,

when here it is the middle of the 17th century.

About the same time my forebear, Richard, escaped England at the end of this revolutionary

process when the restoration came in but here's the beginning of the

reticides that never really stopped more of this tonight oh hugely so huge

I mean they realize that this is a very shocking

a shocking moment and that as much as a very very large proportion of the English

population were in favour of, you know, parliamentary power and supported the parliamentarians in the Civil War.

A very, very small number of people actually believed that the king could be put on trial

or that England should become a republic so they they absolutely knew how dangerous this

was it is quite interesting to sort of think about what happens in London because you know throughout the 1640s there's constant

popular upheaval in London. There's you know there's protests there's petitioning there's riots there's everything and yet during the King's trial there isn't. Now one way that you can read this is that there's a whopping great army in the middle of London and people don't want to put their heads above the parapet. But another one is to say that

well maybe London is broadly in support of putting the king on trial. And the regicides do later

say, well look, you know, we didn't just kill him in a corner. You know, think of Richard

the second, you know, think of, you know, think of medieval kings who was sort of murdered

in castles and you know outside the

we did it in public we did it in the name of the people and you know it was as

I say they reported on it was there was press reports the execution was public it was something which was done

in the name of the people the irony being that most of the people probably wouldn't have supported

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