Regicide: The Trials of Henry Marten
Aug 2022 · Haus Publishing
Ebook
234
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
An illuminating biography of a republican convicted of regicide, drawing on the letters he wrote from within the Tower of London.
Henry Marten—soldier, member of parliament, organizer of the trial of Charles I, and signatory of the King’s death warrant—is today a neglected figure of the seventeenth century. Yet his life was both extraordinary and emblematic: he was at the fulcrum of English history during the turbulent years of the civil war, the protectorate, and the restoration. Imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried at the Old Bailey, Marten was found guilty of high treason, only to be held captive for years on the equivalent of death row. While he was in prison, his letters to his mistress Mary Ward were stolen and published in an attempt to destroy his reputation. Witty, clever, loving, sardonic, and never despairing, the letters offer a rare and extraordinary insight into the everyday life of a man in the Tower awaiting a sentence of death. The attempt to expose him as immoral revealed him instead as a tender and brave man. In John Worthen’s revelatory biography, Marten emerges from the shadows as a brilliantly clever, lively-minded man, free of the fundamentalist zeal so common in many of his republican contemporaries. Marten never abandoned his beliefs in equality, in a representative parliament under a constitution (which he had helped to write) without a monarch or a House of Lords, and in that way can be seen as a very modern man.
Henry Marten—soldier, member of parliament, organizer of the trial of Charles I, and signatory of the King’s death warrant—is today a neglected figure of the seventeenth century. Yet his life was both extraordinary and emblematic: he was at the fulcrum of English history during the turbulent years of the civil war, the protectorate, and the restoration. Imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried at the Old Bailey, Marten was found guilty of high treason, only to be held captive for years on the equivalent of death row. While he was in prison, his letters to his mistress Mary Ward were stolen and published in an attempt to destroy his reputation. Witty, clever, loving, sardonic, and never despairing, the letters offer a rare and extraordinary insight into the everyday life of a man in the Tower awaiting a sentence of death. The attempt to expose him as immoral revealed him instead as a tender and brave man. In John Worthen’s revelatory biography, Marten emerges from the shadows as a brilliantly clever, lively-minded man, free of the fundamentalist zeal so common in many of his republican contemporaries. Marten never abandoned his beliefs in equality, in a representative parliament under a constitution (which he had helped to write) without a monarch or a House of Lords, and in that way can be seen as a very modern man.
About the author
John Worthen is emeritus professor at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of several books, including The Life of William Wordsworth: A Critical Biography, The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and T. S. Eliot: A Short Biography.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
