King Charles…the Martyr?
Charles I led his country into a disastrous civil war and, after losing the conflict, was found guilty by Parliament of being a “tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation”. Why then is Charles the only king included in the “Gallery of Saints” in the cloister of Chester cathedral?
The stained glass windows in the cloister of Chester Cathedral were installed during the 1920s, under the guidance of the Very Reverend Frank Bennett who served as Dean of Chester from 1920 to 1937. The windows, known as the "Gallery of Saints," feature 34 windows with 130 lights, each commemorating saints, biblical figures, and notable individuals associated with the Church of England. However, Charles I is the only English king depicted.
Historians have argued that the English Civil War had religious as well as political causes and King Charles I's policies towards the established Church of England in the 1630s supported a more ritualistic and hierarchical form of worship. This more “Catholic” form of worship alienated many Puritans who sought greater religious freedom and reform. Parliament, which included many Puritans and other Protestant groups, opposed Charles’ religious policies and sought to assert its own authority in matters of religion.
After losing the Civil War against Parliament on the battlefield, Charles was tried and found guilty by Parliament of being a “tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation”. He was sentenced to death by beheading and on the morning of 30th January 1649 was led to the scaffold in Whitehall, which was surrounded by Parliamentarian soldiers to avoid any rescue attempt. He was made to prostrate himself on the scaffold; after a few moments he signalled he was ready and the hooded executioner despatched him with a single blow of his axe. The executioner lifted up the head to show the crowd and, without saying the customary, “Behold the head of a traitor!”, he dropped the head into the crowd of soldiers below. The soldiers swarmed around the severed head, dipping their handkerchiefs into the blood and cutting off locks of hair as momentoes.
The bloodied handkerchiefs were later reported as being able to heal people, leading to a cult which was supported by the Royalists following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under Charles’ son, King Charles II. The date of the execution and martyrdom of King Charles was then included in the official Calendar of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. It was only in 1859 that an Act of Parliament – the Anniversary Days Observance Act 1859 - was passed to remove the date from the Church’s official calendar on the basis that it was essentially a political rather than religious date.
Parliament’s decision to remove the date from the Church Calendar was controversial among some sections of the Church of England, particularly those who followed the more “high church” and ritualistic traditions rather than “low church” or evangelical traditions.
By including King Charles I among the saints around the cloister of Chester Cathedral in the 1920s, Dean Bennet seems to be including Charles once more in the Church’s calendar and, in effect, positioning Chester Cathedral as following the “high church” or Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England.
Charles I led his country to fight a disastrous civil war, but as my old Director of Studies Professor John Morrill wrote in his Stuart Britain: A Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1984), on the scaffold on 30th January 1649 Charles “grasped the martyr’s crown, his reputation rescued by that dignity at the end”.