Free The King's Revenge by Michael Walsh, Don Jordan

Hacker – to organise the king’s death
     by ‘the severinge
[sic]
of his head from his body’.
    According to parliamentary records, the death warrant was ready to sign on Monday, 29 January, though there is good evidence
     that it was in fact ready by the evening of the final day of the trial two days before and that as many as twenty-nine commissioners
     signed it then. 24 Out of the sixty-seven commissioners present on the sentencing, fifty-seven went on to sign the warrant by the end of Monday.
     Two commissioners who were not present at the court’s final sitting also signed the warrant: Thomas Challoner and Richard
     Ingoldsby. A famous story is told that Cromwell and the republican Harry Marten daubed ink on one another’s faces while signing.
     Though their signatures are so far apart on the warrant that they may not have signed at the same time, there is a good source
     for this colourful tale. 25
    The ten commissioners present at the final day of the trial who did not sign were all regular participants in the work and
     sittings of the court, with the exception of Colonel Tomlinson, whose duties as officer in charge of the king’s person throughout
     the trial precluded his participation except when the king was present. A. W. McIntosh has suggested the absence of signatures
     should not be taken as signifying any diminution of purpose. However, Nicholas Love, who helped draft the sentence, was later
     to claim, self-servingly, that he had wished for more discussion before actually moving to the delivery of the sentence. 26
    Over the years, there has been a great deal of speculation about the manner in which some signatures were obtained. While
     it is undoubtedly true that Cromwell drummed up signatories, there is no evidence to support the contention that some commissioners
     were forced to sign. Neither is there any evidence that some signatures were forged.
    The warrant itself shows us that the first to sign was the president of the court, John Bradshaw. He was followed by Thomas,
     Lord Grey of Groby, the MP for Leicester. Grey was given prominence because he was the only peer to sit as a commissioner.
     His signature immediately precedes that of Oliver Cromwell. As the signatures mounted on the parchment, they became increasingly
     bunched up, until there was space for barely three or four more – perhaps the reason more commissioners did not sign, nor
     were asked to sign.
    The warrant stipulated that the execution was to take place in Whitehall between ten o’clock in the morning and five o’clock
     in the afternoon, so that it could be carried out in daylight. The date was set for Tuesday, 30 January 1649 – the following
     day.

4
EXECUTION
    29 January—7 February 1649
    Throughout the freezing night the carpenters worked hard to finish the scaffold ready for use in the morning. The noise echoed
     around Whitehall and across the frozen Thames to the hovels on the far shore. It penetrated the locked and guarded room in
     St James’s Palace and woke the man for whom the structure was being built. Sitting up, he pulled back the heavy curtains surrounding
     his bed. Cold air rushed around his face. By the light of the large candle left burning through the night he read the dial
     of the little silver clock hanging on the bedpost. It was just after five o’clock on the morning of 30 January 1649. Charles
     Stuart, appointed by God as king of England, Scotland and Ireland, counted his last hours on earth.
    St James’s Palace had been built by Henry VIII on the site of a hospital dedicated to the patron saint of lepers. Most of
     Charles’s children were born in the palace. Now he was to be led from it to his death. A court whose authority he had refused
     to recognise had sentenced him to be executed for crimes against the people. As Charles got out of bed, his servant, Sir Thomas
     Herbert, woke from his mattress where he had been sleeping beside the king’s bed. For morethan two years while the