O Horrable Murder' the Trial, Execution and Burial of King Charles I

In this splendid volume historian Robert B. Partridge has done a wonderful service for students of the life of King Charles, martyr; particularly for those who continue to lament the impropriety of the dearth of appropriate memorials to Charles's memory. `O Horrable Murder' serves to refresh the memory of experts, and provides useful background and context for those beginning to study his life and martyrdom. Partridge begins with an accurate and compressed recounting of King Charles's life, then focuses on his imprisonment, last days, trial, execution, and burial. He is adept at synthesizing familiar material from secondary sources, but goes the extra mile correcting errors that have crept into the record by consulting primary sources. For those efforts alone Partridge is to be commended. But this book's primary strengths are the organization of familiar and new details about Charles's final resting place, and the stunning examples of the neglect he has suffered in death. This book provides valuable information for those who argue today for a more appropriate and larger shrine to his memory.Partridge throughout keeps his sympathies well in check: his factual work is scrupulously accurate and fair. Not every detail selected or featured will please Royalists, and some of Partridge's historical analysis might be discussed with alternate views, but by and large he is an author that defends the martyr case and the cause of Charles's memory because he doesn't argue: he presents the facts.Partridge's writing style is brief, clear, and clean, but most commendably he is a master of selecting details that give focus to the argument of the neglect of King Charles. Yet, the argument is not made explicitly, but rather by allusion. Partridge carefully details the initial actions of the interested parties in Charles's day that had neither the resources, nor the power, to provide him with a more suitable burial. He continues to recount the processes and delays for a Restoration memorial through the reigns of Charles II and James II. He then provides the most ironic section of the book, "1649 to 1813," detailing the long period of ignoring Charles. Partridge furthers the unstated argument by providing details of Charles's relics being displayed without piety but as a "curiosity." He then carefully and fully describes the standard treatment dead English Royalty ordinarily would be served. The contrast with Charles's treatment cries out from the vault of Saint George's Chapel at Windsor castle.Partridge's strengths as a historian are evident throughout, but his work with neglected primary sources is the volume's real contribution. Chapter twelve for example is a transcription and comments on Sir Henry Halford's account of the exhumation of Charles in 1813, unearthed when workmen accidentally broke through the unmarked vault in St George's Chapel. The exhumation revealed how the body of the King had been prepared for burial, which enables a comparison to be made bet