"I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did [...] Still, I like Charles – I respect him – I pity him, poor murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!"
Thus Helen Burns in Jane Eyre. When it comes to Charles I of England, I have been raised in the Helen Burns school of thought, and have had little cause to doubt it. It does seem as if poor Charles's main crime was losing the Civil War, which was no reason for the victors to lop his head off. He can't very well be expected to be in favour of deposing himself.
At the same time, I have sometimes wondered if I'm being a hypocrite. I don't object to the lopping off of a monarch's head in principle, after all, if he is actually guilty of a crime. I have zero problems with the execution of Louis XVI of France approximately 150 years later (because he committed treason – me fancying one of the regicides has nothing to do with it). Which raises the question: could any case be made for Charles I having committed treason? What did treason (in political terms) even mean in the 17th century? When did the meaning shift from "treason against your ruler" to "treason against your country and your people"?
So it was with some interest I learned that Robert Harris's (him again? I'm afraid so) historical novel Act of Oblivion would be dealing with the escape of two of Charles's killers, and the attempts made during the Restoration to track them down and despatch them in their turn. Maybe this was a chance to learn more about the rationale behind the decision to execute the king?
It turns out the book has little to say about this particular question for a good two thirds of its respectable length. It's still a gripping read, though, for the most part anyway. There is built-in tension in a man hunt, and the based-on-fact circumstances of this one are exciting enough. The two regicides in question, both willing signees of Charles I's death warrant, are Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, aka Ned and Will. They escape all the way to America, and as they start to build a modest life there you'd think they'd be pretty safe. Turns out they're not.
The significance of the North American colonies still being under English rule slowly dawns on the reader. The Governor of Massachusetts may be a Roundhead through and through: in the end, when faced with a direct order from the King, he must obey it or face consequences for the whole colony. And so the fugitives move from one safe-seeming hideout to another, doggedly pursued by Royalists. It's thrilling stuff, as soon as the chase is on, especially if like me you have no idea of how it's going to end.
But there is one slight problem for a Helen Burnsian like myself. It is somehow natural to root for men who are being hunted, and the two regicides are quite likeable, so yes, I was rather hoping they wouldn't get caught. At the same time, they're not a pair of Jean Valjeans. They did kill the king, and though Ned eventually comes to question the decision (I suspect it's Harris who's doing most of the questioning on his behalf; it would surprise me if the real Edward Whalley had many qualms), the doubt is a long time coming. Will never has any doubts at all. So they will just have to face up to the consequences, won't they? They can't be surprised that Charles II isn't prepared to forgive his pa's killers just like that. What did they think would happen?
At the same time, the fictional leader of the man hunt against them, Richard Nayler, is hard to have much sympathy for. At first I wasn't sure that Nayler being a bit of a pill was intentional. After all, I have found more than one of Harris's heroes to be pills. As the story progresses, though, it becomes pretty clear that Nayler's the bad guy. Harris does give him a strong, albeit contrived, motive for wanting to – well – nail Whalley and Goffe (Cromwell's infamous banning of worship on Christmas Day comes into it), and he's not beyond reason. He's not too thrilled about digging up and executing already dead regicides, for instance (Cromwell and two others). Nevertheless, enough should be enough. I'm not sure the personal motive was such a good idea on Harris's part, either; it would have been more interesting if Nayler had been carried by Royalist convictions alone.
The novel, as one expects from Harris, is well and vividly written, and he writes skilfully about the "down times" in the hunt as well. But the book is a little on the long side for my liking, and some of the hiding-out descriptions could possibly have been cut to tighten it up. I was torn about Whalley writing his memoirs while hiding: it did give me some of the background for the decision to execute Charles I that I was initially looking for, but at the same time it slowed down the narrative.
Also, while I applaud Harris's attempts to get into the religious mind sets of his protagonists – otherwise, it's a common fault in modern historical novels that the characters lose their faith far too easily, so the author doesn't have to deal with a piety they don't understand – I didn't always find it convincing. Better that, though, than Nayler's increasing atheism, which doesn't make much sense seeing as he is so outraged by the very idea of beheading a King. (Why is that so terrible if the King isn't God's anointed? Nayler doesn't seem to have had any personal relationship to Charles.) All in all, Harris has a better hand with the historical figures than the fictional one, though it's clear he prefers Ned to Will.
This isn't my favourite historical novel by Harris, but it's still good; I've found myself missing the New England atmosphere after having finished the book. It's no mean feat to make me sympathise with two Puritan regicides, while at the same time remaining convinced that I would have hated living in Oliver Cromwell's England.
