The Hunting Down of the Regicides: Counter Revolution and Historical Memory in The King’s Revenge

The execution of Charles I in January 1649 remains one of the most debated and ideologically significant incidents in English history. For many years, the establishment and historians viewed the king’s death as a shameful mistake: a tragic deviation, an act of madness, and a constitutional failure that was best quickly forgotten. However, the execution was not accidental or the result of a few extremists. It was the judicial outcome of a revolution that, for a short time, challenged the idea of sovereignty by transferring it from the monarchy to Parliament and the New Model Army. This event marked the most radical assertion of popular political power in England before the 19th century.

Michael Walsh and Don Jordan’s The King’s Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History (2012) explores the aftermath of the revolution, focusing on the counter-revolutionary search. This extensive pursuit, spanning Europe and the American colonies, targeted those who signed Charles I’s death warrant or participated in his trial. It lasted over a decade and involved assassins, spies, informers, and the full force of the restored monarchy’s coercive power. The book excels as a vivid narrative of this search, emphasising that the Restoration was not merely a political correction but also a violent reckoning with a revolutionary era.

Narrative Strengths and Historical Recovery

Although Walsh and Jordan are not professional historians, The King’s Revenge is a thorough and well-researched work of popular history. It sometimes reads like a spy thriller, with scenes of men shot outside churches, others taken back to England to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; agents operating across Europe; coded messages and secret networks. This vivid detail is purposeful. The intensity of the Restoration’s revenge underscores how deeply the old regime feared revolution and how willing it was to go to great lengths to erase any memory of alternatives to monarchy.

The book’s notable achievement is bringing back figures long pushed to the edge of historical memory, especially John Cooke, the republican lawyer who prosecuted Charles I. Often seen as merely a footnote, a legal technician in a story dominated by Cromwell and the aristocrats, Walsh and Jordan reposition him at the story's core, which is well-deserved. Cooke was not just a regicide driven by revenge; he was a forward-thinking political thinker of the revolutionary era: a barrister advocating for low-income clients, proposing what resembled a national health service, opposing debt imprisonment, and aiming to limit capital punishment. His tragic end—betrayed, hunted, and executed as a traitor serves as a stark symbol of what the Restoration aimed to erase: not only the king’s killers but also the social and political ideas they briefly embodied.

Walsh and Jordan show that for most regicides, the king's execution was not inevitable. Cooke originally anticipated some form of reconciliation with the monarchy. It was only through direct pressure from the New Model Army soldiers determined to hold “that man of blood” accountable—that the trial proceeded to its conclusion. This challenges conservative historiography, which often views the execution as either accidental or driven by a small group of zealots. The authors effectively incorporate Geoffrey Robertson’s argument that the trial was essentially the first war-crimes prosecution in history, and Robertson’s comparison of the persecution of the regicides to Stalin’s purges of the old Bolsheviks is an analogy that, despite its limitations, highlights both as retaliatory measures against earlier revolutionary figures.

The Limits of Whig Republicanism

The book’s limitations become evident here. Walsh and Jordan adopt a broadly Whig or left-liberal republican perspective, portraying the revolution as a progressive constitutional milestone. They see the regicides as principled men, whose downfall stemmed from personal revenge and dynastic backlash. While this view allows them to praise the regicides' bravery and sympathise with their tragic ending, it stops short of addressing the crucial question: why was the Restoration able to succeed?

Charles II’s return to England in 1660 was influenced not only by revenge or court politics, though these stories are often highlighted. Instead, a major shift among the propertied and mercantile classes enabled it, as they had previously supported Parliament against the Crown. By the late 1650s, these groups feared radicalism among soldiers, sailors, and apprentices more than a weakened monarchy. The republic’s leadership, growing more conservative and anxious, hesitated to mobilise the popular forces crucial for its survival. This hesitation created a political void that paved the way for the Restoration.Walsh and Jordan register this failure only in passing, largely through the personal drama of betrayal. But the betrayal had an economic and class content that cannot be ignored.

General Monck and the Political Economy of Counter‑Revolution

The book’s discussion of General George Monck offers valuable insight. Monck, who was Cromwell’s former commander in Scotland, switched allegiances for a yearly fortune of £100,000 and handed over the army along with the last military safeguard of the revolution to the Restoration. Walsh and Jordan highlight this as a significant act of treachery, and rightly so. However, it was not merely an isolated instance of personal opportunism; it also signified the wider failure of the republic’s leadership to secure support among the very groups copyholders, soldiers, and the urban poor whose enthusiasm had propelled the revolution in the 1640s.

Materialist historians of the revolution argue that the counter-revolution succeeded mainly because the republic’s leadership withdrew from the social implications of its own political goals. The Levellers were suppressed, radical Army members marginalised, and those with low incomes denied the reforms they had fought for. By the late 1650s, the republic was no longer a revolutionary force; it had become a conservative regime without broad popular support. Monck’s betrayal symbolised this shift. Walsh and Jordan, however, do not address this argument directly. Their account is detailed but lacks analysis, tracing the search for change without exploring the social forces that made it possible.

Memory, Repression, and the Afterlife of Revolution

Despite its limitations, The King’s Revenge offers significant insights. A particularly notable moment is when approximately twenty thousand people attend the funeral of a regicide decades after the Restoration. This detail, highlighted by the authors, shows that republican sentiment—and the hopes of the revolution—remained alive long after the 1660s political setback. While the Restoration could execute individuals, it could not completely erase the ideas they stood for.

Ultimately, the book examines how a restored ruling order will go to extreme lengths to punish those who once challenged it. It focuses on the violence needed to reestablish monarchical authority after a revolution that temporarily transferred sovereignty to ordinary people. It also reminds us that understanding this punishment requires understanding the social forces that made restoration possible.

Conclusion: The Regicides and the Politics of Historical Memory

Walsh and Jordan offer a compelling and accessible overview of the fate of the regicides. Their book highlights a group of individuals—particularly Cooke—whose ideas deserve much wider acknowledgement than they have historically received. However, the core importance of their story extends beyond the dramatic search; it also reveals the political economy of counter-revolution. The regicides were pursued not just for killing a king, but because they symbolised a challenge to the social order itself. Their punishment was part of a larger effort to reassert the authority of property, hierarchy, and monarchy. This effort succeeded because the republic lacked the courage to rely on the popular forces that had originally supported it. "The King’s Revenge" recounts the punishment, while a comprehensive history would also include the story of its defeat.

 

Comments on Alex Callinicos’s review of Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?

These are some observations made by Chris Thompson on Alex Callinicos’s review of Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? For some reason the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) did not post these comments on their website.  

Calinicos's review can be viewed at http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=869. In the near future I shall review Davidson’s book for my own blog.

 This review offers a clear expression of the ever-widening gulf between modern academic research and writing on the events of the 1640s in the British Isles and an approach based on a Marxist, indeed Trotskyite, analysis.

 The prolific use of terms like ‘bourgeoisie’, ‘feudal’ and ‘modern’ aristocracy, ‘proletariat’ and ‘non-bourgeois strata of the middle class’ invites comparison with the debates of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s historians’ group in the late-1940s and early-1950s recently edited by David Parker. Antique concepts like the claim that a class of urban capitalists were developing in the sixteenth century with feudalism or that these people were held to be socially inferior and were excluded from power by Absolute States are given vigorous exercise.

‘Bourgeois’ revolutions inevitably occurred and, in their outcomes, promoted capitalism. There is also an undertow of historiographical controversy: Callinicos’s protest against the revisionist historians of the 1970s is linked to an attack on ‘Political Marxists’ like Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood for their assistance in undermining a more authentically Socialist interpretation.

It is easy to see where the origins of this interpretation can be found. Neil Davidson and Alex Callinicos have recognised that, between 1500 and 1800, the basis for a new form of society was laid down. As a matter of Marxist theology, they believe that the transition to capitalism could not have been achieved peacefully but required a violent break-through, in other words, a ‘bourgeois revolution’. It was logical, therefore, to assume that such ‘bourgeois revolutions’ could be identified in the revolt of the Low Countries against Spanish rule in the latter part of the sixteenth-century and in the violent Puritan Revolution of the 1640s in England.

The motive force for these and later such revolutions was that of a productive bourgeoisie hampered by the protective system of absolute monarchs and a feudal aristocracy. Only in England, where the bourgeoisie was better developed and represented in Parliament, was capitalism able to triumph. A new form of economic organisation was established and industrial capitalism was subsequently able to transform the world.

The profound problems with such arguments and assumptions were obvious six or seven decades ago. It is straightforward enough to claim that economic changes occurred in England in the course of the seventeenth-century and that the country’s economy was more advanced in 1700 than in 1600. But is has never been shown that these changes precipitated the English Revolution or that the economy of 1700 would have been more backward had the English Revolution not occurred. The Revolution itself was undoubtedly immensely costly in human and animal lives, in demographic terms and in the destruction of property. That it forwarded the development of capitalism remains unproven.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the bourgeoisie headed the 1648 revolution despite Callinicos’s pleadings or that the bourgeoisie was allied to the ‘modern aristocracy’ – who were they? – against the monarchy, the feudal aristocracy and the established – in fact, disestablished – Church at that time. The idea of the existence, real or potential, of a non-bourgeois strata of the middle class or of an embryonic proletariat is completely anachronistic.

There was no victory of bourgeois ownership over feudal ownership, no evidence of the abandonment of primogeniture, of competition over the guilds, etc. 

The new economy, the new historiography, the new philosophy and the new science of the post-Restoration period was as much the work of former Royalists as of former Parliamentarians. None of this was stifled by the return of the King, the House of Lords and the Church of England. Tories and Whigs alike contributed to the defenestration of James II in 1688-89 and to the emergence of Britain as a major military and naval power.

The political and religious lessons of the Interregnum had been learnt: there was to be no return to such chaos. In 1640, political and religious fissures could be found across all ranks of English society but they were not based on class or on the rise of a bourgeoisie or on the opposition of a reactionary monarchy or aristocracy or church. After 1660, there was a deep-seated determination never to let such divisions lead to Civil Wars again: slowly, the constitutional machinery to accommodate political and religious differences was put in place.

But these changes have yet to be shown to have been due to the rise of the bourgeoisie or of capitalism. It has, indeed, yet to be shown that there was a ‘bourgeois revolution’ at all. That is why it cannot be found in the works of early modern historians and why the assumptions of Callinicos and Davidson are fallacious and unconvincing.   

A Sympathetic Portrait That Evades the Hard Questions: Peter Gaunt’s Oliver Cromwell

Peter Gaunt’s contribution to the British Library’s Historic Lives series appears, at first glance, as a prime example of accessible scholarship: concise, well-illustrated, and written with a smooth fluency that suits general readers. However, accessibility does not equate to neutrality, and ease of reading does not imply clarity. Gaunt’s biography is influenced by a tradition that views Cromwell not as a complex historical figure, but as a national hero—an icon to be admired, whose contradictions are downplayed, whose violence is explained away, and whose political actions are presented in a morally acceptable light.

A partisan historian in respectable guise

Gaunt’s enduring connection with the Cromwell Association reflects more than coincidence. It embodies an institutional perspective that views Cromwell as a largely virtuous figure, someone whose genuine religious faith and personal integrity offset the more severe parts of his history. This isn’t purely analysis; it leans toward commemorative sentiment. While the language might be scholarly, the core motivation is akin to hagiography.

The old Whig historians were at least honest. Macaulay saw Cromwell’s army as a symbol of a new social era, embodying the disciplined and ideological spirit of the rising bourgeoisie’s historical purpose. Gaunt’s portrayal of Cromwell is more cautious and guarded, yet it shares the same underlying sympathy. He depicts Cromwell as a man ahead of his time—more restrained than driven by circumstances, and more decent than ruthless. The political significance of the English Revolution is reduced to a narrative focused on personal character.

Ireland: the unresolved centre of the book

Gaunt’s evasions are most evident in Ireland. By portraying Cromwell’s campaign as typical of actions by a “figure of the rising bourgeois class” under pressure, he ostensibly appeals to a structural explanation. However, this framing effectively normalizes what was actually a campaign of colonial terror and economic dispossession.

Drogheda and Wexford were not isolated incidents; they were the violent catalysts for a substantial redistribution of land, wealth, and political influence. Cromwell was not just the leader managing this process—he also directly benefited financially from the resulting settlement. Ignoring this financial motivation as a mere side note rather than recognizing it as essential to understanding his actions overlooks a crucial point: Ireland was not simply a tragic chapter in Cromwell’s life but a fundamental manifestation of the economic principles driving the English Revolution. Gaunt’s biography does not confront this. It cannot confront it without abandoning its sympathetic frame. 

History without theory

The lack of a theoretical framework is deliberate, reflecting a political stance rather than a stylistic one. Gaunt’s narrative avoids engaging with key analytical questions that would clarify the revolution as a conflict among social forces. Scottish Presbyterianism is only briefly addressed. The dissolution of the Rump Parliament is depicted as a simple political maneuver, ignoring the influence of radical factions within the army. The Levellers are mentioned only in passing, serving as mere background. The detailed class dynamics—such as economic motivations, ideological conflicts, and social tensions—are largely missing. This discussion highlights that Gaunt’s limitation is part of a wider pattern in modern history writing. There is a trend away from social explanations, a focus on biography over analysis, and a hesitation to place individuals within class struggles. Consequently, Cromwell is often depicted as a solitary moral figure—flawed yet admirable and ultimately decent—rather than as a political leader representing a rising bourgeoisie whose victory depended on dismantling the feudal system and violently reshaping property relations.

An accessible introduction, not a guide to understanding

Gaunt’s book possesses notable strengths. It is clearly written, visually appealing, and careful in its treatment of mythologized material. For those awaiting John Morrill’s upcoming editions of Cromwell’s writings, it provides a handy introduction. However, an intro that portrays Cromwell as a sympathetic, depoliticized figure responsible for significant colonial violence does not prepare readers to fully understand Cromwell or the revolution he spearheaded. It’s best viewed as a starting point—one that should be complemented by exploring the social, economic, and ideological histories that Gaunt’s restrained volume largely omits.