Identify a Monarch That Murdered a Family Member to Gain Power

Intentional killing of a monarch

Regicide is the purposeful killing of a monarch or sovereign of a polity and is often associated with the usurpation of power. A regicide can as well be the person responsible for the killing. The word comes from the Latin roots of regis and cida (cidium), meaning "of monarch" and "killer" respectively.

In the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king later a trial, reflecting the historical precedent of the trial and execution of Charles I of England. The concept of regicide has also been explored in media and the arts through pieces like Macbeth (Macbeth's killing of King Duncan) and The Panthera leo King.

History [edit]

In Western Christendom, regicide was far more common prior to 1200/1300.^[i] Sverre Bagge counts 20 cases of regicide betwixt 1200 and 1800, which ways that 6% of monarchs were killed by their subjects.^[1] He counts 94 cases of regicide between 600 and 1200, which means that 21.eight% of monarchs were killed by their subjects.^[ane] He argues that the most likely reasons for the decline in regicide is that clear rules of succession were established, which made it hard to remove rightful heirs to the throne, and only made information technology so that the nearest heir (and their backers) had a motive to kill the monarch.^[1]

There is evidence that regicide and the ability of states to keep or even expand their territories are negative correlated: Firstly, elite violence hindered the development of territorial state capacity, and the killing of rulers also directly resulted in a more likely loss of territory. And secondly, state capacity, reflected by territorial state capacity, could be hypothesized to accept had a restraining consequence on interpersonal violence. This would be consistent with Pinker's (2011)^[2] view that modern state capacity leads to a reduction in violence, both interpersonal and in terms of armed services conflict.^[3]

Britain [edit]

Before the Tudor period, English language kings had been murdered while imprisoned (for example Edward II and Edward Five) or killed in boxing past their subjects (for instance Richard Three), only none of these deaths are usually referred to equally regicide.

Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots [edit]

The word regicide seems to accept come into pop use among continental Catholics when Pope Sixtus V renewed the papal bull of excommunication confronting the "crowned regicide" Queen Elizabeth I,^[4] for—among other things—executing Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587, although she had abdicated the Scottish crown some 20 years earlier.^[5] Elizabeth had originally been excommunicated past Pope Pius V, in Regnans in Excelsis, for converting England to Protestantism after the reign of Mary I of England.

Execution of Charles I of England [edit]

Later on the First English Civil War, Male monarch Charles I was a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. They tried to negotiate a compromise with him, but he stuck steadfastly to his view that he was Male monarch by divine right and attempted in clandestine to raise an ground forces to fight against them. Information technology became obvious to the leaders of the Parliamentarians that they could non negotiate a settlement with him and they could not trust him to refrain from raising an army confronting them; they reluctantly came to the determination that he would accept to be put to death. On 13 December 1648, the House of Commons broke off negotiations with the King. Two days later on, the Council of Officers of the New Model Army voted that the King be moved from the Isle of Wight, where he was prisoner, to Windsor "in order to the bringing of him speedily to justice".^[6] And so in the eye of December, the Male monarch was moved from Windsor to London. The House of Commons of the Rump Parliament passed a Neb setting up a High Courtroom of Justice in order to try Charles I for high treason 'in the name of the people of England.' From a Royalist and post-restoration perspective this Beak was not lawful, since the Firm of Lords refused to pass it and it predictably failed to receive Royal Assent. Nevertheless, the Parliamentary leaders and the Army pressed on with the trial anyway.

At his trial in front of The High Courtroom of Justice on Sat 20 January 1649 in Westminster Hall, Charles asked "I would know by what power I am chosen hither. I would know by what authority, I mean lawful".^[seven] In view of the historic issues involved, both sides based themselves on surprisingly technical legal grounds. Charles did not dispute that Parliament as a whole did have some judicial powers, but he maintained that the House of Eatables on its ain could not try anybody, and so he refused to plead. At that fourth dimension under English constabulary, if a prisoner refused to plead, he would be treated identically to one who had pleaded guilty (This has since been changed; a refusal to plead now is interpreted every bit a not-guilty plea).^[8]

He was establish guilty on Saturday 27 January 1649, and his decease warrant was signed by fifty-nine commissioners. To show their understanding with the judgement of death, all of the Commissioners who were nowadays rose to their feet.

This gimmicky print depicts Charles I's decapitation.

On the day of his execution, xxx January 1649, Charles dressed in two shirts and so that he would not shiver from the cold, lest information technology be said that he was shivering from fear. His execution was delayed by several hours and so that the Business firm of Commons could pass an emergency bill to make it an offence to proclaim a new King, and to declare the representatives of the people, the House of Commons, every bit the source of all just power. Charles was and then escorted through the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall to a scaffold where he would be beheaded.^[ix] He forgave those who had passed sentence on him and gave instructions to his enemies that they should larn to "know their duty to God, the King – that is, my successors – and the people".^[ten] He and then gave a brief speech outlining his unchanged views of the relationship between the monarchy and the monarch's subjects, catastrophe with the words "I am the martyr of the people".^[eleven] His head was severed from his body with 1 accident.

One week after, the Rump, sitting in the Firm of Commons, passed a bill abolishing the monarchy. Ardent Royalists refused to take information technology on the basis that there could never be a vacancy of the Crown. Others refused because, as the bill had non passed the House of Lords and did not take Regal Assent, information technology could not become an Act of Parliament.

The Announcement of Breda 11 years later paved the mode for the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. At the fourth dimension of the restoration, thirty-one of the fifty-nine Commissioners who had signed the death warrant were living. A general pardon was given past Charles II and Parliament to his opponents, simply the regicides were excluded. A number fled the country. Some, such equally Daniel Blagrave, fled to continental Europe, while others like John Dixwell, Edward Whalley, and William Goffe fled to New Haven, Connecticut. Those who were still available were put on trial. Six regicides were establish guilty and suffered the fate of being hanged, drawn and quartered: Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scrope, John Carew, Thomas Scot, and Gregory Cloudless. The captain of the baby-sit at the trial, Daniel Axtell who encouraged his men to barrack the King when he tried to speak in his own defence, an influential preacher, Hugh Peters, and the leading prosecutor at the trial, John Cook, were executed in a similar manner. Colonel Francis Hacker, who signed the guild to the executioner of the male monarch and commanded the baby-sit around the scaffold and at the trial, was hanged. Business organisation amongst the imperial ministers over the negative impact on popular sentiment of these public tortures and executions led to jail sentences being substituted for the remaining regicides.^[12]

Some regicides, such as Richard Ingoldsby and Philip Nye, were conditionally pardoned, while a further xix served life imprisonment. The bodies of the regicides Cromwell, Bradshaw and Ireton, which had been buried in Westminster Abbey, were disinterred and hanged, drawn and quartered in posthumous executions. In 1662, three more regicides, John Okey, John Barkstead and Miles Corbet, were also hanged, drawn and quartered. The officers of the court that tried Charles I, those who prosecuted him, and those who signed his death warrant, have been known e'er since the restoration equally regicides.

The Parliamentary Archives in the Palace of Westminster, London, holds the original death warrant of Charles I.

Usurpation [edit]

Regicide has particular resonance within the concept of the divine right of kings, whereby monarchs were presumed past decision of God to have a divinely anointed authorization to dominion. Every bit such, an attack on a male monarch by ane of his own subjects was taken to corporeality to a direct claiming to the monarch, to his divine right to rule, and thus to God's will.

The biblical David refused to harm King Saul, because he was the Lord'due south all-powerful, even though Saul was seeking his life; and when Saul eventually was killed in boxing and a person reported to David that he helped kill Saul, David put the human being to death, even though Saul had been his enemy, because he had raised his hands against the Lord'due south all-powerful. Christian concepts of the inviolability of the person of the monarch take keen influence from this story. Diarmait mac Cerbaill, King of Tara (mentioned to a higher place), was killed by Áed Dub mac Suibni in 565. According to Adomnan of Iona's Life of St Columba, Áed Dub mac Suibni received God's punishment for this crime by existence impaled by a treacherous spear many years later then falling from his ship into a lake and drowning.^[13]

Even after the disappearance of the divine correct of kings and the advent of constitutional monarchies, the term continued and continues to be used to describe the murder of a king.

In France, the judicial penalisation for regicides (i.e. those who had murdered, or attempted to murder, the king) was peculiarly difficult, even in regard to the harsh judicial practices of pre-revolutionary France. As with many criminals, the regicide was tortured and then as to make him tell the names of his accomplices. However, the method of execution itself was a course of torture. Hither is a description of the expiry of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to impale Louis XV:

He was beginning tortured with cherry-red-hot pincers; his paw, holding the knife used in the attempted murder, was burnt using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. Horses were then harnessed to his arms and legs for his dismemberment. Damiens' joints would not interruption; after some hours, representatives of the Parlement ordered the executioner and his aides to cut Damiens' joints. Damiens was then dismembered, to the applause of the crowd. His trunk, apparently yet living, was then burnt at the stake.

In Discipline and Punish, the French philosopher Michel Foucault cites this instance of Damiens the Regicide every bit an case of disproportionate punishment in the era preceding the "Age of Reason". The classical school of criminology asserts that the punishment "should fit the law-breaking", and should thus exist proportionate and not extreme. This approach was spoofed past Gilbert and Sullivan, when The Mikado sang, "My object all sublime, I shall accomplish in time, to let the punishment fit the criminal offence".^[14]

In common with before executions for regicides:

• the mitt that attempted the murder is burnt
• the regicide is dismembered alive

In both the François Ravaillac and the Damiens cases, court papers refer to the offenders as a patricide, rather than as regicide, which lets ane deduce that, through divine right, the king was also regarded as "Begetter of the country".

See likewise [edit]

• Listing of regicides
• Fifth Monarchists saw the overthrow of Charles I as a divine sign of the second coming of Jesus.
• Society of Male monarch Charles the Martyr
• Monarchomachs
• Fratricide (killing one'southward blood brother)
• Matricide (killing one's mother)
• Patricide (killing of one's father)
• Sororicide (killing i's sister)
• Tyrannicide (killing of a tyrant)

Notes [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Bagge, Sverre (2019). "The Decline of Regicide and the Rise of European Monarchy from the Carolingians to the Early Mod Period". Frühmittelalterliche Studien (in German). 53 (1): 151–189. doi:10.1515/fmst-2019-005. ISSN 1613-0812. S2CID 203606658.
2. ^ Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of our Nature: The Turn down of Violence in History and its Causes. Penguin Britain.
3. ^ Baten, Joerg; Keywood, Thomas; Wamser, Georg. "Territorial State Capacity and Aristocracy Violence from the 6th to the 19th century". European Journal of Political Economy.
4. ^ Da Magliano 1867, p. 631 harvnb fault: no target: CITEREFDa_Magliano1867 (help)
5. ^ Emma Goodey (3 February 2016). "Mary, Queen of Scots (r. 1542–1567)". The Royal Family . Retrieved 25 August 2020.
6. ^ Kirby 1999, p. viii footnote 9, cites: Wedgewood 1964, p. 44
7. ^ Kirby 1999, pp. 10, 13 footnotes 12 and 17. "The record of the Trial also appears in Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials, Vol 4, roofing 1640–1649 published in London in 1809. p. 995".
8. ^ Kirby 1999, p. 14.
9. ^ Pestana, Carla Gardina (2004). The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press. p. 88.
10. ^ Kirby 1999, p. 21 § "After the trial" ¶ iv
11. ^ Kirby 1999, p. 21 footnotes 12 and 35. "The record of the Trial also appears in Cobbett's Complete Drove of State Trials, Vol IV, roofing 1640–1649 published in London in 1809. p. 1132."
12. ^ page 19 "History Today", February 2014
13. ^ Adomnan of Iona. Life of St Columba. Penguin books, 1995
14. ^ "The Mikado by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan". gsarchive.net. Archived from the original on 2 October 2017. Retrieved 29 April 2018.

References [edit]

• The opening speech of Charles I at his trial, The Constitution Society, archived from the original on ten May 2012
• Kirby, Michael (22 January 1999), The trial of King Charles I – defining moment for our constitutional liberties (PDF), Canberra: Loftier Court of Commonwealth of australia (Anglo-Australian Lawyers' Association conference, London), archived (PDF) from the original on 12 February 2014
• Wedgewood, C.V. (June 1964), A Bury for King Charles: The Trial of Charles I (First ed.), Penguin

Further reading [edit]

• David Lagomarsino, Charles T. Wood (Editor) The Trial of Charles I: A Documentary History Pub: Dartmouth College, (1989), ISBN 0-87451-499-1
• Geoffrey Robertson The Tyrannicide Brief, Pub: Random House, (2005), ISBN 0-7011-7602-4
• Act abolishing the Office of King, 17 March, 1649

External links [edit]

judethaddy83.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regicide

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