Seventeenth-century England suffered from civil wars, the trial and execution of King Charles I, and the ‘rule’ under Oliver Cromwell as a result of these behaviors. Spencer is a snappy storyteller, chronicling the sordid politicking and horse trading that characterised the months around the Restoration, as people scrambled to prove their loyalty to the dead king’s son.

Killers of the king: the men who dared to execute Charles I

At the same time, a rumour was circulating that he had been one of the two masked men seen on the scaffold with Charles: one had swung the axe and the other had shown the king’s head to the crowd. Furthermore, his attention towards the horrific sights, smells, and sounds of hanging, drawing, and quartering is quite intimate and explicit. Those who are not regular history readers will still need to acknowledge that no history book is going to be breakneck speed throughout and you have to read about and learn the context to events but I’m not sure I’ve ever read a history book before in which the author has successfully kept everything just so readable to a wide audience. The writing style in these chapters doesn’t necessarily make edgy reading (although Spencer does try) and instead reads somewhat like a court report. Then I got this book and another photo was included on the jacket and the familiarity was more striking.

We read accounts of regicides hunted down and brutally assassinated by bounty hunters as the long arm of the new monarchy stretched across nations. Once enthroned, and despite public promises of gentle justice (even forgiveness) for the traitors, Charles II waged a never-ending campaign to hunt down every last man who had a significant role in placing his father on trial.

Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to [PDF] [EPUB] Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to

Their stories here were revealing and powerful, and the fates they received brutal and extraordinary. Lin-Manuel Miranda credited the books for inspiring a song in his show Hamilton, as well as a story beat in the Walt Disney film Moana. Because men owned the wealth of a family, if a man had his property confiscated there was nothing left.

In this end, Spencer’s work gives a fairly good historical narrative of the events that led to the death of the king and what eventually happened to his killers. Following this the book moves on to the events that lead to the crumbling of the newly emerged republic, the chief one being the death of Cromwell. You were guilty of high treason if you just thought about the king’s demise, so the fact that you’d actually signed his death warrant took it several stages beyond that.