‘The First Act of Hostility’: Beverley’s Part in the Trial of Charles I

Abstract

The trial of King Charles I has in the last twenty years been discussed by many scholars. Much less attention has been paid to the evidence of the 33 witnesses summoned to the Westminster Court, yet what they said was the basis of the charges against the king. The first witness, William Cuthbert, was a Yorkshireman from Hull Bridge, Beverley. While the king and royalists alleged that the ‘hostilities’ of the Civil Wars had begun at the Beverley Gate, Hull, this prosecution witness claimed that the breaking, entering and possession of his house near Beverley was ‘the first act of hostility that was committed in those parts.’

Keywords:

• King Charles I’s trial
• Beverley
• William Cuthbert
• Civil Wars
• Hull

Acknowledgements

Professor Edward Vallance generously allowed me to see his forthcoming EHR article before publication; Dr Susan Neave and Dr David Neave kindly provided valuable information on the Cuthberts, Lady Gee’s house and the Westminster link.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Peacey, Regicides, 1.

2 The exception is Edward Vallance, “Testimony, Tyranny and Treason”.

3 New Style years beginning on 1 January are used throughout.

4 Firth, C.H. and R. S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660 (HMSO, 1911) I, 1253. “Act’ rather than Act, as this act was passed by only a fraction of one house, the Commons. Hereafter Act, following contemporary usage.

5 TNA, SP 16/517; Histoire Entière & Veritable, 30 (see Notes on sources); Oglio of Traytors, unnumbered pages (see Notes on sources); Nalson, True Copy, 30; Charge of the Commons, 4; Kesselring, Trial of Charles I, 33. The dates 30 June and 30 July are not mentioned again in the trial and seem to have no particular significance. There was also some confusion about days of the week. For Charles' itinerary in 1642 see Thomas Manley, Iter Carolinum (1660); Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles I, 1641-3; A Diurnall out of the North.

6 Evidence of William Harrison in his 1660 trial for Regicide, quoting Acts 26:26: Howell, ed., State Trials, 5, 1024.

7 Howell, ed., State Trials, 4, 1096, 1001; Robertson, Tyrannicide Brief, 170; Kesselring, Trial of Charles I, 44.

8 Oglio was an archaic word for a miscellany. See Note on sources, below, and Vallance, “Testimony, Tyranny and Treason”.

9 Howell, ed., State Trials, 4, 1101-13; Kesselring, Trial of Charles I, 50-60.

10 Samuel Burden, in State Trials, ed. Howell, 5, 1089, 1153.

11 Kelsey, “Politics and Procedure”, 19-20; Kelsey, “Trial of Charles I”, 599.

12 Wedgwood, C. V., The Trial of Charles I (London: Collins, 1964), 148-9; Lockyer, Trial of King Charles the First, 100; Kesselring, Trial of Charles I, has all 33 witnesses’ statements, lightly modernised, 50-60.

13 Kelsey, “Politics and Procedure,” 19-20; Vallance, “Testimony, Tyranny and Treason”.

14 Crawford, Patricia. “Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood,” Jnl of British Studies 16, 2 (1977), 54, fn 49.

15 Howell, ed., State Trials, 5, 1089.

16 See transcript of William Cuthbert's evidence, below.

17 There seems to be no legal basis on which to consider the raising of a standard as a declaration of war.

18 Terrible and True Newes from Beverley and the City of Yorke (London, 1642): BL, E.154(34); Hopper, A., The Papers of the Hothams, Governors of Hull during the Civil War (Camden Soc., 5th ser., 39, 2011), 56, 58, 269.

19 Oglio of Traytors, 78, records that Robert Large painted the great standard of war that was planted upon the high tower of Nottingham castle. Histoire Entière & Veritable, 5, gives a different version, saying it was the pole that was painted and put on the old tower.

20 Howell, ed., State Trials, 5, 1090.

21 Howell, ed., State Trials, 5, 1102.

22 Gooch’s name is not in the published records of calls or admissions to Gray’s Inn (inf. Andrew Mussell, Gray’s Inn archivist). The Prosecutor John Cook had tutored students at Gray’s Inn and was a member there: Robertson, Tyrannicide Brief, 312.

23 Nalson, True Copy, 78,79. Gooch and Price’s evidence is not in Histoire Entière & Veritable or Oglio of Traytors. For Price’s involvement as a court clerk in the 1649 trial see Kelsey, “Politics and Procedure,” 20-21. Price was a City Independent, part of a radical dissenting group similar to the Levellers.

24 See section on William Cuthbert's evidence.

25 Cook, John, King Charls [sic] his Case: Or, An Appeal to all Rational Men concerning his Tryal at the High Court of Justice, 41 (England: Giles Calvert, 1649). At BL, E.542(3).

26 East Riding Archives (ERA), Beverley Minster parish registers, PE129/1 and PE129/2, and bishops’ transcripts; J. W. Clay, ed., Paver’s Marriage Licences (YAS Record Series vols 40, 43, 46, 1909-1912); TNA, Chancery records C 2/JasI/C11/79, Cuthbert v. Rone; and C 5/600/164, Cuthbert v. Fisher.

27 Drypool is now part of the City of Hull.

28 ERA, PE129/1.

29 Clarendon, Great Rebellion, 5, 169; Cuthbert’s statement, below; Hull History Centre (HHC), BRS/7/105-116, Warton’s case, a file of evidence from 16 witnesses relating to Cuthbert’s and others’ depredations of Warton’s Beverley property, given to the Hull Delinquency Committee in June 1645. Attempts to identify the Beverley houses have not yet succeeded. Lady Gee’s house was definitely not the often-suggested forerunner of Beverley’s North Bar House. Manby, a merchant draper, probably lived in Mercers Row, on the north-west side of Saturday Market. Manby later absconded to the royal HQ at York, with the town’s mace, corporation money and the plate.

30 ERA, PE129/150, Provost of Beverley rental of c.1381-1417, f.28; Leach, A. F., ed., Memorials of Beverley Minster… A.D. 1286-1347, Part 2 (Surtees Society 108, 1903, 320-1); Sheahan, J. and T. Whellan, York and the East Riding of Yorkshire (Beverley: Green, 1856), 2, 299.

31 HHC, U DX50/1, Beverley Water Towns court roll (1649-57).

32 BL, Maps 162.n.3, copy of Joseph Osborne’s ‘A Description of a River called Hull Water…1668’ which shows Hull Bridge but no major house there; Neave, D., Neave, S. et al., ed., Yorkshire East Riding Hearth Tax 1672-3, (London: British Record Society, 2016), 127, 131; Young, A., “Holdernesse, Beverley, Hull: some notes in 1797,” Annals of Agriculture, 31 (1798), 114.

33 HHC, BRS/7/105-116.

34 Evidence of Warton’s agent, German Wynder, June 1645, in HHC, BRS/7/105-116.

35 Rushworth, Historical Collections, 7, 830-58. Warton’s estates were sequestrated c.1645 and he compounded for them in 1652: Clay, J. W., ed., Yorkshire Royalist Composition Papers, (YAS Record Series, 18, 1895), 55-57.

36 ERA, PE1/54, Beverley St Mary’s Churchwardens’ accounts, 1645-6.

37 HHC, U DPA/6, Patrington Court Rolls.

38 HHC, U DX50/1, Beverley Water Towns court roll.

39 ERA, PE129/1, 18 Oct. 1649.

40 Westminster City Archives, Westminster Rate Books, 1634-1900.

41 Young, Charlotte, “The Gentry are sequestred all’: A study of English Civil War sequestration,” unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2019.

42 Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 1653-4, 52, 76

43 Calendar of the Committee for Compounding etc. vol. 4, 3008.

44 The Great Memorial. Different editions are noticed in Vallance, “Testimony, Tyranny and Treason,” forthcoming.

45 A Hue and Cry after the High Court of Injustice, 8.

46 Howell, ed., State Trials, 5, 1078.

47 Peacey, “The Lies of the Regicides?.”

48 When the court decided the sentence, they condemned the king as “tyrant, traitor and murderer…likewise for being a public enemy to the Commonwealth of England”: Nalson, True Copy, 91; Kesselring, Trial of Charles I, 60.

49 Accusing the king of treason, generally an offence against the king, required some nimble footwork by the lawyers: Orr, “Juristic Foundation,” 117-37.

50 Remonstrance of his Excellency Thomas Lord Fairfax, 23.

51 Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs, I, 176.

52 The militia were male civilians who could be called up to support the government. Commissions of array, a medieval survival using trained bands of civilians, were used by Charles I in 1642 after the Parliamentarians declared only they could call up the militia.

53 Drake, Francis, Eboracum, (York: Bowyer, 1736), 171.

54 A Declaration of the Lords and Commons…July 13, 1642 (London: Husbands and Franck, 1642). “Provisions are restrained…” could refer to the warrants sent out to constables such as Cuthbert, who kept his writ as evidence for years.

55 Eikon Basilike: The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings…. (London, 1649), 47.

56 King Charles His Speech Made upon the Scaffold at Whitehall Gate… 30 January 1648 (London: Printed by Peter Cole, 1649). At BL, E.540(17). Charles was correct in saying that Parliament’s Militia Ordinance preceded his Commissions of Array.

57 Thorpe’s Charge: Sergeant Thorpe judge of the assize…his charge…at Yorke 20 March 1648 (London, Walbancke and Best, 1649) at BL E.558(6), provides some of these definitions, and included a justification of the king’s execution. Plunder was a new word for a crime, first used in the Thirty Years’ War.

58 The warrant transcription is not in Histoire Entière & Veritable nor Oglio of Traytors, and is taken here from Nalson, True Copy, 65.

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Barbara English

Barbara English is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Hull. A graduate of St Andrews University (MA, PhD) she worked as an archivist for the National Register of Archives in the West Riding, as an editor for Nelson’s Medieval Texts, and for the Open University. In retirement she spent two years at Princeton University. Her current research is on the East Riding with a particular interest in medieval and early modern Beverley.