The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold

by Geoffrey Robertson

Book Overview

Charles I waged civil wars that cost one in ten Englishmen their lives. But in 1649 Parliament was hard put to find a lawyer with the skill and daring to prosecute a King who claimed to be above the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400044510
• ISBN13: 9781400044511
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 429 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

John Cook[e]: a brave man of principle

I confess: I like the way Geoffrey Robertson thinks and the way he writes even if I don't always agree with his conclusions. This book is a great read. If you can suspend your knowledge of the history (and any associated bias) and look at the events through the perspective of the law, then this is a wonderful fresh look at the legal issues uncovered/exposed by these events. This book is not just about the events of 17th century England. The issues discussed reverberate today in the trials of modern war criminals and leaders. Highly recommended to all who have an interest in history, the law and contemporary international events. Jennifer Cameron-Smith Note: I first published this review in April 2006 for the hardcover version of the book.

Excellent history of a little known lawyer....

John Cooke of 17th Century England, now that is a name most unknown to massive majority of Americans today and few who do, probably known him as "John Cook" and he wasn't well regarded by previous authors like Antonia Fraser, Charles Charlton or C.V. Wedgwood. But Geoffrey Robertson does great justice to him and this book is a biographical work on John Cooke (with the "e") and his greatest legal work, conviction of King Charles I of high treason against the people of his kingdoms. Of course, that conviction later cost Cooke his life when royal restoration came. The author traces Cooke's life and interwoven it with the dramatic events of his lifetime, his services with Thomas Wentworth, the English Civil Wars, Cromwell's rule and finally at the end, restoration of Charles II. But the author took care stayed within the boundary of his subject. The author also made sure that Cooke wasn't just a "hack lawyer" as many of the previous historians made him out to be but someone who is ahead of his time in terms of legal reforms. Cooke appears to be a type of lawyer who took his profession very seriously. According to the author, he was the first to advocate the right to remain silence, to pro bono lawyers to help those who cannot afford one and to regard kingship in terms of office granted by the people instead of one anointed by God. Many of what Cooke initially advocated soon became part of our nation's Constitutional laws and legal system we enjoyed today. The book reads very well and it well written. Obviously the author have done his homework and it clears up many of the misconceptions and little disregards that previous historians have given toward John Cooke, including the proper spelling of his name. Core of the book is the trial of King Charles I and its an excellent narrative far above the only other book that I read on the subject, authored by C.V. Wedgwood. He was a die-hard Puritan but made his reputation as fair-minded and very knowledgeable. He wasn't very famous nor rich or well connected, ironically nobody really know what he even looked like after his death since no one thought Cooke was worthy enough to paint his likeness. This book provides a lot of useful and new information to anyone interested in British history. The book highly recommended for anyone interested along this subject area. However, I strongly recommended that you should have a good background on the time period before reading it since the subject of the book is rather specific in nature and having a good background knowledge of the reign of Charles I, the civil wars and all that really helped enhance your understanding of the book.

The Tyrannicide Brief

Geoffrey Robinson, a British jurist and worlwide advocate for human rights, has produced a gripping biography of a man largely ignored by history, John Cooke, a barrister selected by Parliament to prosecute the deposed and imprisoned king, Charles I. In pressing his case, Cooke broke new legal ground, arguing that rulers derive their power, not from God, but from the people they rule. And following from this, rulers can be called to account, deposed, and punished if they rule tyrannically. In this case, and in his subsequent juridical career, Cooke is shown to have been farsighted and fair. His patriotism, his concern for human rights, and his integrity gained him no protection from Stuart wrath, however, after the Restoration, and the terrible payment they exacted from him is detailed, almost too vividly, in the final pages of the book. Still, the principles he espoused are today the recognized rights of Englishmen, are enshrined in the American Constitution, and are slowly becoming part of international law, as Sadaam Hussein recently learned.

WADHAM AND GOMORRAH

Around the turn of the 17th century, Wadham College was founded at Oxford for the gifted sons of poor but respectable parents. Its high-profile alumni from this period included Admiral Blake who achieved spectacular victories during Cromwell's reign. It also welcomed, at the age of 14, John Cooke, later the prosecuting counsel who secured the conviction of King Charles I. Geoffrey Robertson has a long and distinguished record as a barrister in the field of human rights, and in this book he turns constitutional historian to raise awareness of the significance of Cooke for English legal history. It is startling to realise that the only written constitution England has ever had was a republican one, for the duration of Cromwell's Protectorate 1649-1660. Its roots were shallow, and its fate was sealed with the death of Cromwell himself during a ferocious storm in 1658, widely touted as an omen. Nevertheless the law and polity of England under the Stuart kings were a sickening morass. James I, founder of the dynasty, had indoctrinated his son Charles from boyhood with the doctrine of Divine Right, under which the monarch was allegedly above the law. This convenient theology was understood by Charles literally and unquestioningly. He did not even pretend to think that his agreements were binding on himself, he was unencumbered by scruples in the matter of raising taxation, he was indifferent to the death of one in every ten of his male subjects in the civil wars that he incited, and when pressed on such matters at his trial he asserted sublimely that he embodied the security of his people, whatever this concept may have conveyed to him. At the same time the legal profession was deeply corrupt. Enforcement of the criminal law was ineffective, but political and religious speech-crimes were punished savagely, as was debt. A career in the law was a path to self-enrichment (autres temps, autres moeurs) and the privileged classes viewed humble birth and lack of patronage as not far short of a crime either. The Magna Charta and the statute of habeas corpus however were always there in the background, and a characteristically English fiction attributed royal offences against these to the King's ministers, the King being of course out of legal reach, or so Charles argued. Against such a background Robertson paints in a man of modest demeanour but high talent and total incorruptibility for whom religion went hand-in-hand with rationality and fairness; a man also, to his ultimate undoing, who could not and would not hold his tongue. Robertson writes as an advocate. He is not trying to rescue Cooke's reputation, Cooke having very little reputation in the first place. Certainly, if Cooke had significant character-defects we don't read about them here and he emerges as a bit of a saint. However the basic objective seems to be to argue for Cooke's unrecognised importance in the precedents he set. English common law is all based on case-law and precedent. I'm not

What subject can give sentence on his king? . . .

And who sits here that is not Richard's subject? Shakespeare, Richard II, Act IV, Scene 1. On October 11, 2006, Britain's House of Lords (a panel of Judges known as the "Law Lords" who serve as the British equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court) issued a ruling in the case of Jameel v. Wall St. Journal Europe. The Lords' decision radically altered Britain's libel laws and has been hailed as a remarkable victory for freedom of the press in Britain. The attorney who argued successfully on behalf of the newspaper was Geoffrey Robertson, Q.C. Mr. Robertson is also a noted human rights attorney who has been involved in cases involving Chile's General Pinochet, Malawi's Hastings Banda and other high profile cases involving crimes against humanity. Robertson has turned this expertise to good use in a well-written and timely book, "The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold". The Tyrannicide Brief examines the life of John Cooke, the attorney who created the legal theory that destroyed forever the right of kings to act with impunity from justice. Until 1649 the answer to Richard II's question was "no, there is no subject who can pass sentence upon a king." John Cooke changed that answer from no to yes and this is his story. The story of John Cooke is little remembered and less understood. Cooke was a man of humble origins. Born in 1608, his father was a small Puritan farmer in Leicester who managed to gain a scholarship admission to Oxford at age 14 to study law. Robertson's account of Cooke's life and his practice of law is a fascinating one. Cooke was very radical for his day (as befitted his Puritan background). He railed against rampant corruption and cronyism in the legal profession and the justice system. He created the first lawyer's code of ethics (although not accepted during his lifetime and for centuries to follow) whose basic principles now form the bedrock of legal codes of ethics in both Britain and the United States. He sought reform of a criminal justice system in which the rich could `buy' justice and in which the poor were routinely tossed into debtor's prison simply at the swearing out of a complaint. He was the first attorney (to my knowledge) to suggest that attorneys owed the public an obligation to work for free on behalf of the poor and indigent. Needless to say Cooke's theories of ethics did not sit well with his colleagues at the bar. The rump parliament that sat during the period of Cromwell's rule was dominated by lawyers (indicating how little things have changed in Britain and the U.S. in the last 350 years) quashed virtually all of Cooke's attempts to reform the profession and the criminal and civil justice system. Cooke was also a strong supporter of Cromwell and the Puritan revolt against the Charles I. Charles I led a series of bloody civil wars against the Parliamentary forces that challenged Charles I's right to absolute rule. These civil wars caused the death of ap