Three-and-a-half centuries ago Charles Stuart, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France, stepped through a window of the Banqueting House in Whitehall onto a scaffold erected in the street. In front of a silent crowd he was executed by the severing of his head from his body. This volume provides an account of the trial and execution. The King was brought to trial by his own people. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of his actions before and during the Civil War, the events of his last days show him to have been a man who believed absolutely in his right to rule and in his ability to defend the laws and liberties of his people by his actions. They show a man who was to meet his fate with a dignity and bravery which impressed friend and foe alike. Charles was buried in an unmarked vault in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. Normally that would be the end of the story, but when workmen accidentally broke into the vault in the early years of the 19th century, his coffin was found and opened in the presence of the Prince Regent. The exhumation revealed how the body of the King had been prepared for burial, which enables a comparison to be made between his and other royal burials of this period.