It describes the ruthless way the restored monarchy in 1660 set about eliminating those it judged enemies of the new regime.
Here is no smiley, nice story of a gentle government intent on healing the wounds of the English Civil War. Instead we have according to the reviews I have read a determined hunt to punish those who participated in the execution of Charles 1. It is one of those tales which seldom feature much in the history books.
My own school histories were big on the “merry monarch” reaching out the hand of reconciliation and ruling in a way his father hadn’t, but failed to even to mention his promise made in exile that “We shall by all ways and means possible endeavour to pursue and bring to their punishment those bloody traitors....”
And this is what he did. In the years following the Restoration the leading participants in the old king’s trial were arrested tried and executed. Those who had escaped were hunted across Europe and North America and assassinated. The bodies of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw who were dead were dug up and placed on public display in a grim copy of those found guilty at the show trials who were hung drawn and quartered.
This royal retribution had begun as early as 1649 with the murder of a leading Republican on a diplomatic visit to Holland and extended some 39 years later with the attempt to arrest the 72 year old Edmund Ludlow. In all 20 regicides were executed, others died in prison and 12 in exile. It’s a little bit of that alternative history which so rarely gets given the light.
Picture; From "Nalson's Record of the Trial of Charles I, 1688" in the British Museum. Taken by J. Nalson, L. L. D., Jan.4th, 1683 London, 1684, folio and published by Wikipedia Commons
*The King’s Revenge: Charles 11 and the greatest Manhunt in British History, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, Little Brown £20
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