Historical Fiction
Written in Their Stars: Extract, Chapter Three
King Charles took a step forward and hesitated.
He asked one question. “Can this be higher?”
No.
Nan’s heart twisted as she imagined her king lying horizontal behind the black-hung railings, flat on the rough wooden boards, vulnerable as a child.
Get this over with, get this done. You would kill a horse injured at Naseby more quickly. Get this done.
The crowd stood silent, one breath held by all.
The executioner raised his axe.
The steel vanished against the sombre clouds. Perhaps it did not exist.
The blade descended.
A thud. And beyond the dark cloth, a spray of crimson, the colour of Frances’s cloak, of the Cross of St. George, of England’s life blood.
It is done.
Allen’s groan mingled with the groan of the crowd, the world, the heavens. Such a sound Nan had never known in birth or death.
The executioner held the king’s head aloft, blood dripping, hair no longer tucked in his fine linen bedcap, eyes closed.
He slept the absolute and infinite rest of martyrs.
Narrative Non Fiction
Historic Royal Palaces Website
BITTER DAY
A huge crowd had gathered in the bitter weather. But they were held so far away that the King's final short speech was lost in the freezing air. Erected against the Banqueting House in Whitehall, the scaffold was hung round with black cloth.
In the centre of the blackened and sanded floor stood the axe and a lower quartering block of a kind used to dismember traitors. Two men, heavily disguised with masks, stood ready to perform the act.
The King, his hair now bound in a white nightcap, took off his cloak and laid down. He told the executioner that he would say a short prayer, and then give a signal that he was ready.
After a little pause, the King stretched out his hand, and the axe fell, the executioner severing his head in one clean blow.
Many watching were aghast, with one witness commenting 'There was such a groan by the thousands then present as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again’.
Non Fiction
The British National Archives
Three days later, Parliament reinforced their authority, declaring that ‘the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, being chosen by, and representing the People, have the Supreme Power in this Nation’ (see footnote 4). On this authority, they established the High Court of Justice, specifically for the purpose of trying the king. Throughout his trial, however, Charles I refused to acknowledge the authority of this High Court of Justice to try him.
On the afternoon of 23 January, therefore, chief prosecutor John Cook warned the king that if he continued to refuse to answer the charges laid against him, then the court would proceed to sentencing. Charles remained resolute, and was sentenced on 27 January 1649. For raising the standard against and causing the bloodshed of his subjects during the civil wars of the 1640s, Charles was found ‘guilty of High Treason and of the murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, defilations, damages, and mischiefs to this nation’.
Three days later, on 30 January, Charles I was executed outside of Banqueting House at Westminster, ‘put to death by the severing of his head from his body’ (see footnote 5). Treason was now definitively a crime against the state.
1. The sentencing of Charles I, SP 16/517, fo 44v
2. The US Declaration of Independence, EXT 9/1
3. Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 6, 1648-1651 (London, 1802), p 107
4. Ibid, p 111
5. SP 16/517, fo 44v
Narrative Family History
Luce Hutchinson, Wife of the Regicide Colonel John Hutchinson
Luce Hutchinson retired to Owthorpe after John’s death, where she began writing an account of her husband’s life for the benefit of her children, composed poetry, wrote significant theological tracts and lived on the fringe of the burgeoning early modern women’s literary movement. Her extraordinary poem Order and Disorder is considered by many to be equal to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Dangerous to publish in her own time because of its controversial content, Luce entrusted the finished memoirs manuscript and her notebooks to her cousin Nan Wilmot, Countess of Rochester, where they were discovered upon her death in the late 1680s. Luce’s eyewitness account of the English Civil War was published by her great-grandson Julius Hutchinson as Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson in 1806 and has been in print ever since. Her writing is now considered one of the foremost examples of seventeenth-century women’s literature and a fascinating insight into England’s Civil War.
Although Owthorpe House has long vanished, St. Margaret’s church remains, and within lie Lucy, John and Luce, forever together and memorialised by Luce’s words.
Poetry (Haiku)
The haiku is a 17th Century Japanese poetic form that consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.
A king on the stage
The crowd frozen silent still
Thump! The axe has struck
FAMILY HISTORY WRITING PROMPT
Choose one, and write about it. If you want, write it one of the styles
1. Think of one of your oldest relatives that you knew. What were they like as a child? What are their fondest memories and most significant experiences? What advice would they give to the younger members of your family?
2. Describe an unusual family tradition of yours that continues today. What are its origins and significance? Why is it important to your family to do every year? Will you carry on the tradition?
3. Consider your favorite family vacation. What made it special? What role did your family members play in making it so special?