Member-only story
The English Revolution: When England Beheaded Its King
A king stood in a courtroom. Not as a judge. As the accused.
That sentence alone would have sounded insane to anyone living a decade earlier. Kings didn’t answer to courts. They didn’t answer to anyone.
Yet in January 1649, England did exactly that to Charles I. And honestly, once you dig into how it happened, you realize it wasn’t some sudden act of rebellion. It was the end result of decades of pressure that just kept building until something snapped.
Where It Actually Started
James I and later his son Charles I believed something that, looking back, feels almost absurd: that God himself had handed them the right to rule, no questions asked. This was called the Divine Right of Kings, and for a while, it worked out fine for them.
It stopped working the moment they needed money.
Running a kingdom isn’t cheap. Wars especially drain royal coffers fast, and the one place that controlled the purse strings wasn’t the king. It was Parliament. So when Charles kept demanding funds and Parliament kept pushing back, trying to claw some control away from the throne, you had a standoff that was never going to end quietly.
