In the mid-17th century, a remarkable legal event occurred.

The King of England was put on trial for treason against the sovereign state.

Such a process involved a singular determination by Parliament to find a way to try the one they saw as a man of blood.

Through June legal process to ensure that he paid the price for his

forks and failings but not through extra judicial summary justice this would be a

trial that called witnesses. Even a butcher testified

against his king. To understand how such a thing came to be we have to dial back to

explain why the Civil War had broken out and how the King himself

came to be blamed against all historical precedent.

And we have to wonder at why it was so very important to have a trial and whether there could have been a different outcome.

To discuss this, I'm joined by Professor Edward Valence of the University of Rehampton.

Professor Valence has written several excellent journal

articles pondering Charles the First Trial and his latest book is a radical history of Britain. Professor Ted Valence, welcome to not just the Tudors.

Thank you, nice to be here.

I thought we'd start with some simple straightforward questions.

So we're going to be talking chiefly about the trial of Charles I

but we need to do some context first.

Could you answer that sort of old chestnut and disclose for us the

grounds for the Civil War? Oh right brilliant yes did it within a couple of minutes

yeah the Civil War is really prompted by the unpopularity of

Charles the first regime across the British Isles so not just in England and that's

really important because although there's growing opposition to his

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