The Trial of King Charles I (Original)

Artist: Peter Jackson
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 11" x 14" (270mm x 350mm)
Date: 1965
Code: JacksonCharlesILL

This is the unique original Gouache painting by Peter Jackson.

The Wonderful Story of Britain: King Charles is Defeated. The trial of King Charles the First in Westminster Hall. Charles I was the first of our monarchs to be put on trial for treason and it led to his execution.

This event is one of the most famous in Stuart England's history - and one of the most controversial.

No law could be found in all England's history that dealt with the trial of a monarch so the order setting up the court that was to try Charles was written by a Dutch lawyer called Issac Dorislaus and he based his work on an ancient Roman law which stated that a military body (in this case the government) could legally overthrow a tyrant.

The execution of Charles, lead to an eleven year gap in the rule of the Stuarts (1649 to 1660) and it witnessed the rise to supreme power of Oliver Cromwell - whose signature can be clearly seen on the death warrant of Charles.

Charles was put on trial in London on January 1st 1649. He was accused of being a "tyrant, traitor and murderer; and a public and implacable enemy to the Commonwealth of England." He was to be tried by 135 judges who would decide if he was guilty or not. In fact only 68 turned up for the trial. Those that did not were less than happy about being associated with the trial of the king. In fact, there were plenty of MP's in Parliament who did not want to see the king put on trial but in December 1648, these MP's had been stopped from going into Parliament by a Colonel Pride who was helped by some soldiers.

The only people allowed into Parliament were those who Cromwell thought supported the trial of the king. This Parliament was known as the "Rump Parliament" and of the 46 men allowed in (who were considered to be supporters of Cromwell), only 26 voted to try the king. Therefore even among those MP's considered loyal to Cromwell, there was no clear support to try Charles.

This is the original artwork from Treasure no. 118 (17 April 1965).

• Artist Biography
  Peter Charles Geoffrey Jackson (4 March 1922 - 2 May 2003; Brighton, UK)
  Peter Jackson was a master of historical illustration, second-to-none in his ability to bring any period to life. His wonderful London Scrapbooks drawn for the Evening News from the 1940s onwards, some of which were collected in two memorable volumes, "London Explorer" and "London is Stranger Than Fiction", are legendary.
  
  Jackson began his career adapting classics into comic strips for newspapers in the late 1940s. This led to his long association with the Evening News. His collection of maps, prints and artefacts from all ages of London formed the basis of a number of books, including London: 2000 Years of a City and Its People, The History of London in Maps and Walks in Old London.
  
  Jackson trained at the Willesden School of Art in London, and his first published work was an illustration for True Story in 1945.
  
  In the late '40s, he drew a series of adventure classics, one of which, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, was printed as Thriller Comics Library no. 29 with additional frames by Patrick Nicolle (taken from his 1952 Sun strip). Jackson is the first to dismiss this strip and it is certainly not in the same league as his version of Treasure Island, part of the same series, which was published in book form by Pitman, or any of the wonderful work he was to do later.
  
  Much of his working life was taken up with historical reconstructions, etc., and his work for Look and Learn, Express Weekly, Swift, Mickey Mouse Weekly and Eagle confirm that he could have been an even greater asset to the Thriller Comics Library.
  
  Jackson was chairman of the London Topographical Society, a founder member and chairman of the Ephemera Society and was to have been the recipient of an OBE. The announcement of this honour arrived a day after his death on 2 May 2003, aged 81.