On a cold midwinter’s day in 1649, King Charles I stepped onto a platform in Whitehall. He knelt down and said a prayer. Then he stretched his arms forward to signal that he was ready to die. As the axe swung down, the crowd that had gathered emitted a sound that was later recalled as a ‘collective groan.’

The killing of a king, an unheard of act, brought a shocking end to a destructive decade of civil war in England. In this episode of the historian Malcolm Gaskill explains how that act was seen in its own time and what fears it generated for the future.

London might have been the centre of people’s interest in 1649, but elsewhere other tantalising events were taking place. Gaskill takes us from Whitehall to Surrey, where we see the founding of a radical new movement called The Diggers. Then we travel across the Atlantic Ocean to see the frontier community of Springfield in Massachusetts. This is the setting, as Gaskill explains, for a curious case of witchcraft.

Malcolm Gaskill is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. He is one of Britain’s leading experts in the history of witchcraft, and he is the author of the captivating new micro-history, The Ruin of all Witches: life and death in the New World.

As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.

Click here to order Malcolm’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.

Scene One: Tuesday 30 January: Whitehall, London. The execution of King Charles I.

Scene Two: Sunday 1 April: St George’s Hill, Walton, Surrey. The Start of the Diggers

Scene Three: Wednesday 30 May: Springfield, Massachusetts. The Slander Trial of Mary Parsons

Memento: The top of King Charles I’s silver cane

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Malcolm Gaskill

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Colorgraph

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

Or on Facebook

See where 1649 fits on our Timeline