Drawn largely from primary sources, more than 2000 of them discovered by the author in 53 separate archives, the true story behind the trial and execution of King Charles I emerges in greater detail than ever before. The central question is: who were the men who tried the King and signed his Death Warrant, who are known as the ‘regicides’? For the first time it is possible to know who they really were, what were their backgrounds, their families, their early careers, their political and religious beliefs, and above all, their extensive relationships with one another. Eleven of them were barristers, one was a judge, some were colonels of army regiments, most were MPs. The majority of them could call one another ‘cousin’.

In a sense, this was a family affair, an intensely traditional reaction against the tyranny of an upstart intruder, to show
him they were not his subjects but his superiors. The previously unpublished private and public correspondence of these men reveals their deepest thoughts and feelings. A vast number of original documents have been transcribed and are published for the first time in full in the many appendices to the three volumes, of which this is Volume One. This work is one of the most detailed accounts of England in the seventeenth century which has ever been written, and it upsets many conventional notions of the period in question.