This work investigates the legal and political mechanisms behind the trial and execution of King Charles I, questioning how the English Parliament justified the unprecedented regicide of a monarch. C. V. Wedgwood, a distinguished historian of the seventeenth century, utilizes primary source documents, trial transcripts, and contemporary accounts to reconstruct the final days of the King. The text provides a rigorous examination of the constitutional crisis that pitted the divine right of kings against the emerging authority of the parliamentary state. By focusing on the procedural details of the trial, the author illuminates the ideological fractures that defined the English Civil War.

This text is widely regarded as a standard historical account of the trial, noted for its narrative clarity and meticulous attention to the legal complexities of the era. The work remains a foundational reference for those seeking to understand the transition of power during the mid-seventeenth century.