John Cook (regicide) - Trial and Execution

Trial and Execution

As a regicide, Cook was exempted after the Restoration of Charles II from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act which indemnified most opponents of the Monarchy for crimes they might have committed during the Civil War and Interregnum (1642–1660).

In the memoirs of Edmund Ludlow an account of this trial and execution is given.

...he was seized and imprisoned by Sir Charles Coote, who joining with Monk in his treachery to the Commonwealth, sent him over to England, that he might sacrifice him to his new master, in satisfaction for the blood of his party which he himself had formerly shed. Being brought to his trial, he was accused of preferring, in the name of all the good people of England, an Impeachment of High Treason to the High Court of Justice against the late King; that he had signed the said impeachment with his own hand; that upon the King's demurrer to the jurisdiction of the Court, he had pressed that the charge might be taken for confessed; and therefore had demanded judgment from the Court against the King: but this inditement being more particularly charged upon him in the three following articles: First, that he, with others, had propounded, counselled, contrived, and imagined the death of the late King. Secondly, that to bring about this conspiracy, he, with others, had assumed authority and power to accuse, kill and murder the King. Thirdly, that a person unknown did cut off the King's head; and that the prisoner was abetting, aiding, assisting, countenancing and procuring the said person so to do.

He answered, first, that he could not be justly said to have contrived or counselled the death of the King, because the proclamation for the King's trail, even by the confession of his accuser, was published on the ninth of January, which was the day before he was appointed solicitor to the High Court of Justice.

In the second place, though the Court should not admit that to be an Act of Parliament, which authorized him to do what he did; yet he assured himself they would allow it to be an order which was enough to justify him.

Thirdly, that he, who had neither been accuser, witness, jury, judge, or executioner could not be guilty of treason in this case.

He urged that having acted only as council, he was not answerable for the justice or injustice of the cause he had managed; that being placed in that station by a public command, it could not be said he acted maliciously or with a wicked intention, as the inditement mentioned; that words spoken do not amount to treason, much less when set down in writing by the direction of others; especially since no clear proof had been produced, that his name subscribed to the charge against the King was written by himself. He said, that to pray and demand justice, 'though injustice be done upon it', could not be treason within the statute; that when he demanded justice, it might be meant of acquittal as well as of condemnation; and that if it should be accounted treason in a council plead against the King, it must also be felony to plead against any man who may be unjustly condemned for felony; that the High Court of Justice, though now called tyrannical and unlawful, was yet a court, had officers attending them, and many thing had authority, there being then no other in this nation than that which gave them their power; and if this will not justify a man for acting within his own sphere, it will not be lawful for any one to exercise his profession unless he may be sure of the legality of the establishment under which he acts. These and divers other things of no less weight he said in his defense; but the cabal thinking themselves concerned to prevent the like in time to come and to terrify those who were not only able but willing also to be employed in such service, procured from the jury a verdict of condmnation against him according to their desire.

—Edmund Ludlow.

Thus, John Cook was tried and found guilty of high treason for his part in the trial of Charles I. He was hanged, drawn and quartered with the radical preacher Hugh Peters and another of the regicides on 16 October 1660. Shortly before his death, Cook wrote to his wife:

We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom.