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Regicide judge’s cool oak table chair up for auction
A handsome oak chair that converts into a table once owned by the judge who presided over the treason trial and death sentence of King Charles I is going under the hammer.
The chair is up for auction at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Tuesday, and is expected to be sold for between £1,500 and £2,500.
The inscription on the underside reads: “This chair belonged to John Bradshawe of Bradshawe Hall Derby SH presiding judge of the trial of King Charles I.” […]
Furniture specialist Mark Yuan Richards commented: “This is a powerful survival from one of the most turbulent moments in British history. Table chairs are rare in themselves, but one with a direct and explicit association to John Bradshaw is exceptional.
The House of Commons passed an act on January 6, 1649, creating a High Court of Justice specifically to adjudicate the charges of treason against King Charles I and there was little question of what their judgement would be. The court was to consist of 135 jurists. Many of them were Cromwell’s military officers, who had already an expressed preference to just kill the king directly without the pretense of a trial. There were MPs from 39 counties, and a few dozen members of Parliament who had attended Inns of Court (where student lawyers were trained) but had only learned the rudiments of law to attend to their business and political offices, and a handful of barristers of no distinction. Not a single peer was on the court.
Monarchs had been deposed before — Edward II, Richard II — simply by articles written by a bishop or by committees of legal luminaries/lords. Royalty we were tried an executed — two of Henry VIII’s wives, Lady Jane Grey, Mary Queen of Scots — were tried by nobles and ecclesiastical leaders. None of these precedents would do for the Cromwellian purpose, because the peerage, clergy and professional judiciary were vocally opposed to the execution of King Charles and considered the whole tribunal illegal.
Obviously the royalist supporters of the king who had fought on the Cavalier side of the civil war held this “court” to be nothing but a blatant attempt to cloak violence under guise of legality that had zero legitimacy under the norms of English law. They weren’t the only ones opposed, however. Even allies like the Scottish Presbyterians who had fought on the Parliamentarian side were horrified by this ginned-up court and its predetermined outcome.
In the end, only one actual practicing judge was willing to serve on the tribunal: John Bradshaw, Chief Justice of Chester. He presided over 21 of the 23 sessions as Lord President (he missed the first two). The majority of the membership were not present at the sessions. Records name 87 commissioners who attended the sessions with regularity. The most reliable faction to attend the sessions were the contingent of officers, and of course their commander-in-chief Oliver Cromwell.
The King was found guilty of treason on January 27th, 1649. Fewer than half of the appointed commissioners (57 of them) were present and stood in agreement to convict the King of being a “Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a public enemy.” Only 59 signed his death warrant on January 30th. King Charles I was beheaded that same day.
Bradshaw benefited greatly from his role as regicidal judge. He presided over trials of other aristocratic Cavaliers, condemning them to death as well. He was elected President of the Council of State, the executive branch of government that replaced the executed King and his Privy Council, and appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, then as now a huge cash cow. He was opposed in principle to the Protectorate and in 1654 lost the Lancaster, but was reinstated as Chancellor by Cromwell’s son and heir as Lord Protector, Richard, in 1659. Later that year, he died from an illness and was buried at Westminster Abbey.
His death turned out to be timely. On May 29th, 1660, Charles I’s eldest son Charles was asked to return to England as monarch and was restored to his father’s throne. Charles II was not in a forgiving mood. On January 30th, 1661, 12 years to the day after King Charles I’s beheading, Charles II had the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Parliamentarian general Henry Ireton exhumed and their corpses hanged in irons on the Tyburn gallows. They were then beheaded and their heads put on pikes at Westminster Hall. The bodies were tossed in a mass grave, as was the body of Bradshaw’s wife who had been buried next to him in Westminster Abbey.
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