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Hello, in defending the killing of a king, the poet and republican, John Milton declared,

if men within themselves would be governed by reason, and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without,

and blind affections from within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation.

Milton's tyrant was Charles I, executed for treason in 1649.

The events of his trials, or drama of ideas about kingship, parliament, law and power,

said amidst political confusion, and the bloody aftermath and rupture of civil war.

And despite Milton's claims, whether Charles was justly killed, or the victim of a messy coup, is still debated three hundred and sixty years after his death.

With me to discuss the trial of Charles I, just in champion, professor of the history of early modern ideas at Royal Holloway University of London,

Diane Perkins, fellow and tutor at Keyblade College Oxford, and David Wooden, professor of history at the University of York.

Just in champion, on the 20th of January 1649, Charles I was brought into Westminster Hall under armed guard to face his accusers. Could you sub that scene for us please?

I think we've got to imagine an incredibly bustling, vibrant, perhaps even turbulent hall. The trial itself takes place at the south end of the hall.

Westminster Hall is a place of public resort, so before the trial, it's full of shops, booths, you go there to get your books, to get your pen, your ink.

All of that is cleaned out, and massive galleries are created, so that this is a place of public resort.

As one colleague puts it, it's a place where the trial took place in front of everybody. It's a public trial.

Charles is brought in at the south end, so he doesn't have to walk through the crowd, real anxieties that there will be a military attempt to capture him and take him away and save him.

The officials, and remember this is a performance, it's a stage play, spend days trying to work out how the trial will look.

They spend time thinking about how the Lord President John Bradshaw will process in, how many soldiers he will have with him, what sort of gown, what sort of mace will he bear the sort of state in front of him.

At that far south end, Charles is really hidden from the audience, and when we think of the audience, there may have been as many as four or five thousand people crammed into that room, hanging from galleries, hanging from the picture spaces.

And it's a very noisy place. The actual business of the trial is shielded from most of that audience, and we know from the trial records that the business is disrupted by shouts of God save the king or justice, justice.

So it's a very noisy event, and it's not one that we see often represented on the television of a quiet little crown court affair. It's very complicated and it's very stage.

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