Inglorious republicans (II).(The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold)(Book review)

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON'S latest book, The Tyrannicide Brief, is subtitled "The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles 1 to the Scaffold". But it is more, much more than this. It is a book about the wonders of the legal profession, the awfulness of the English monarchy, the lost opportunity of Cromwell's Republic, human rights, inhuman rights and of great parliamentarians ... as long as they were not of a conservative bent nor wore feathers in their hats. This is a very interesting book indeed.

To republicans like Robertson, the era of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans was a golden age. The King was dead, the monarchy abolished and parliament controlled by a motley gang of lawyers, landowners and religious fanatics. So this book is as much an effort to glorify republicanism as it is to glorify a seventeenth-century lawyer named John Cooke.

When Charles I was captured by Cromwell's roundheads after a series of civil-war battles it was decided to put Charles on trial. The King's crime had been to tangle with parliament over taxes, suspend parliament and then have the audacity to take on a parliamentary army created to challenge his authority. Much life was lost in the process. Unfortunately for Cromwell, his legislature was of dubious legal standing and when a cabal of parliamentarians decided to put Charles on trial, the senior legal eagles of the nation took flight. Enter John Cooke, an almost unknown lawyer from Gray's Inn (Robertson is also a Gray's Inn barrister). Cooke was commissioned to draw up a charge.

The task of laying a charge against the king was insurmountable. Legally, Charles Stuart was above the law. There was no legal authority to try a king or reigning queen of England. England was ruled by laws agreed through the Commons, approved by the House of Lords and sanctioned by the King. Cromwell had arrested the King and disbanded the House of Lords. Only one third of the system was in place. So Cooke undertook that most dreaded of legal stratagems (one which Robertson supports) of "creating a new crime" to fit the person you wish to punish. Cooke dreamt up the charge of "tyrant".

At his trial Charles demanded to know, "by what authority am I being tried". The court refused to answer and Charles refused to offer a plea. The judges then used another legal stratagem of a "non-plea" being taken as a guilty plea. Charles I was sentenced on January 27, 1649, and beheaded three days later.

It's at this stage of the book that you begin to wonder what all this is about and where it is heading. Robertson claims that his interest in the execution of Charles Stuart intensified when he was asked to "dispute a paper given by Justice Michael Kirby on the 350th anniversary of the trial of Charles I". What a pity the author didn't take Justice Kirby's paper and use it as a basis for a counterargument in this book. We aren't told what Justice Kirby had to say and we are desperate to know. There is also an uneasy feeling that Geoffrey Robertson is seeing himself as John Cooke--human rights lawyer extraordinaire. Even the photograph of Robertson on the back fly-leaf depicts the author looking closer to the fashion of a seventeenth-century puritan than a modern-day author--and Robertson looks remarkably like the fictitious portrait of John Cooke on page 181.

The most annoying aspect of The Tyrannicide Brief is ...