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Richard Brandon

Richard Brandon (died June 1649) was an English executioner who held the position of Common Hangman of London in the mid-17th century, inheriting the role from his father, Gregory Brandon. He is principally remembered as the individual most likely responsible for beheading King Charles I on 30 January 1649 outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, an act of regicide that marked a pivotal moment in English history following the king's conviction for treason by Parliament.^[1] Brandon's identity was concealed during the execution by a hood and false beard, reflecting the reviled nature of the task even among professional executioners; contemporary accounts indicate he initially refused the assignment despite offers of substantial payment, but ultimately performed it for a reported sum of £30, receiving partial compensation immediately afterward.^[2]^[3] Only months later, on his deathbed, Brandon allegedly confessed to the deed in a pamphlet titled The Confession of Richard Brandon the Hangman, wherein he expressed remorse, citing the king's final words and his own torment of conscience as factors in his impending demise from illness.^[3]^[4] While the authenticity of this confession has been debated by historians, it remains key evidence supporting Brandon's involvement, corroborated by his professional experience and the absence of other confirmed candidates. The execution elevated Brandon to posthumous notoriety, symbolizing the radical rupture of monarchical authority during the Interregnum, though his personal life included unrelated legal troubles such as accusations of bigamy. As a hereditary hangman, his career embodied the grim, socially ostracized trade of public execution in Restoration-era England, where such roles were both essential to the justice system and objects of public disdain.

Family and Early Life

Parentage and Inheritance of the Trade

Richard Brandon was the son of Gregory Brandon, who served as London's common hangman during the early 17th century, including under the reign of James I (1603–1625).^[5] Gregory held the position amid the social ostracism typical of executioners, with records noting his activity as late as 1611.^[6] The role of common executioner in London was effectively monopolized by the Brandon family, passed hereditarily due to its extreme stigma—no reputable citizens sought it, leaving it to propagate within pariah lineages to ensure continuity of public duties.^[7] Richard succeeded his father in this trade around 1639, following Gregory's death or incapacitation, with Gregory recorded as deceased by August 1640.^[8] ^[5] Contemporary accounts provide scant details on Richard's precise birth date, though his assumption of duties implies maturity by the late 1630s; family control ensured seamless transition without public advertisement or competition for the post.^[5] This inheritance solidified the Brandons' grip on the executioner's monopoly, sustained by official tolerance of their ignominious expertise despite broader societal revulsion.^[7]

Upbringing in London

Richard Brandon was born in London to Gregory Brandon, who held the position of common hangman during the early 17th century, and his wife Alice.^[9] The exact date of his birth remains unknown, but as the son of the city's official executioner, he entered a household defined by a hereditary trade that traced back through family lines.^[7] The profession of common hangman offered financial benefits, including fixed payments per execution—typically around 10 shillings for hanging and higher fees for beheading—and perquisites such as the condemned's clothing and belongings, which could be sold for additional income.^[10] However, it imposed severe social stigma; executioners and their families faced public scorn, exclusion from guilds and communities, and restrictions on social interactions, often residing in peripheral or low-status neighborhoods to minimize hostility.^[10] Gregory Brandon's burial at St. Mary Matfelon Church in Whitechapel, a densely populated East End parish known for its working-class inhabitants, suggests the family's integration into London's rougher urban fringes.^[8] In this milieu, young Brandon likely observed and assisted in the practical aspects of the trade from an early age, as the role demanded skilled handling of ropes, axes, and scaffolds, with training passed informally within families to ensure competence and secrecy.^[7] London's pre-Civil War atmosphere, marked by religious divisions and economic pressures in areas like the East End, amplified the isolation of such households, where survival depended on enduring public disdain for the necessities of state-sanctioned punishment.^[10]

Career as Executioner

Assumption of Duties in 1639

In 1639, Richard Brandon succeeded his father, Gregory Brandon, as the Common Hangman of London, thereby assuming the hereditary role within the family that had been established by Gregory since at least the early 1610s.^[7] This transition ended Gregory's tenure, which concluded with his death in 1640, and positioned Richard to handle executions under the oversight of the city's sheriffs.^[8] The position, though not formally salaried by the Crown, was quasi-official and sustained through fees paid by authorities for each execution, along with customary perquisites such as the condemned's clothing. Brandon's early duties centered on the procedural execution of sentences issued by London's courts, primarily involving the hanging of felons at Tyburn, the traditional site for public executions in Middlesex.^[10] These responsibilities ensured continuity in the grim institutional function of capital punishment, with Brandon operating from a residence in areas like Rosemary Lane, stigmatized yet essential to civic order.^[11] For cases warranting decapitation—reserved for higher-status offenders or specific crimes—the role extended to wielding an axe, maintaining the trade's dual methods without interruption from the prior generation. The appointment reflected the practical heritability of the executioner's office in early modern London, where familial succession minimized disruptions in a role shunned by most due to its social infamy, yet vital for enforcing judicial penalties.^[7] Civic authorities tacitly endorsed this continuity to avoid vacancies that could delay justice, underscoring the position's embedded place within the machinery of punishment despite lacking explicit royal patent in peacetime.^[10] Richard Brandon, serving as London's common executioner from 1639 onward, conducted routine public hangings at sites such as Tyburn for capital felonies including theft, robbery, and murder, which were prevalent in the city's overcrowded and crime-ridden environment.^[10] Beheadings, typically reserved for treason or high-status offenders, occurred at locations like Tower Hill using a heavy axe, a method requiring precise technique to ensure a single, clean stroke.^[7] These executions, numbering in the dozens annually amid London's persistent disorder, functioned as stark public deterrents to maintain order, though contemporary accounts highlight their frequency without precise tallies for Brandon's specific caseload.^[12] Financially, the role offered perks including a fee paid by the sheriff for each execution—often several pounds sterling, equivalent to weeks of skilled labor—and the right to claim and resell the condemned's clothing, which could yield additional profit from finer garments.^[13] Records indicate Brandon engaged in this practice, marketing intact apparel to secondhand dealers, supplementing his income in an era when such perquisites offset the job's hazards.^[13] Despite these material benefits, executioners endured profound social ostracism, viewed as unclean pariahs whose necessary grim work rendered them ineligible for guild membership, church attendance, or routine social integration.^[14] Brandon, like predecessors, likely resorted to disguises or resided on society's fringes to evade public revulsion and violence, with their families facing similar exclusion from schools and communities, underscoring the profession's isolation even as it enforced legal retribution.^[14] This duality—essential for state-sanctioned justice yet reviled—reflected empirical adaptations to a system reliant on visible severity for deterrence, honed by practitioners over generations.^[15]

Role in the Execution of Charles I

Context of the English Civil War and Regicide

The English Civil War arose from escalating conflicts between King Charles I and Parliament over royal prerogative, arbitrary taxation such as ship money, religious impositions including Laudian reforms, and the balance of power in the mixed constitution, culminating in the king's attempt to arrest five members of Parliament on 4 January 1642 and his raising of the royal standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642, which initiated open hostilities.^[16] The First Civil War (1642–1646) saw Parliamentary forces, reorganized under the New Model Army established by the Self-Denying Ordinance of 1645, achieve strategic dominance through victories like Naseby on 14 June 1645, leading to Charles's surrender to Scottish Covenanter forces at Newark on 5 May 1646 and his subsequent handover to Parliament.^[17] Despite imprisonment, the king covertly allied with disaffected Scots, igniting the Second Civil War in 1648, marked by uprisings in England and Scotland that Parliament crushed, notably at Preston from 17–19 August 1648, exposing Charles's duplicity in negotiations like the Engagement with royalist Scots.^[18] Frustration with Charles's intransigence and the risk of renewed royalist alliances prompted military intervention: on 6 December 1648, Colonel Thomas Pride's troops barred approximately 140 MPs deemed conciliatory toward the king from the House of Commons, reducing membership to around 80 and creating the Rump Parliament aligned with radical Independents and army interests.^[19] This purged body, viewing the king as an existential threat to parliamentary sovereignty after his orchestration of wars that caused over 200,000 deaths, enacted an ordinance on 6 January 1649 establishing the High Court of Justice with 135 commissioners (though only 68 actively participated) to prosecute him for high treason.^[20] The trial opened on 20 January 1649 in Westminster Hall, where Charles refused to plead or acknowledge the court's legitimacy, arguing it violated fundamental law; proceedings detailed his alleged subversion of liberties, dissolution of parliaments, and levying war on the realm, resulting in conviction on 27 January as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy" for betraying the trust reposed in him by the people.^[21] Charles I met his death by axe on 30 January 1649, scaffolded before a subdued crowd outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall, his final words affirming his innocence and divine right while urging prayers for the realm's peace.^[22] This regicide shattered the Stuart monarchy's sacred aura, unprecedented since William the Conqueror as it legally decapitated an anointed king without conquest or abdication; royalists condemned it as felonious murder contravening God's ordinance and common law, whereas regicides rationalized it through causal accountability—the king's repeated empirical aggressions, from personal rule (1629–1640) to civil bloodshed, necessitated severing tyrannical power to restore popular sovereignty and avert perpetual anarchy.^[23]^[24]

Evidence Linking Brandon to the Axe

A pamphlet published in late June 1649, shortly after Brandon's death on June 20, claimed to record his deathbed confession admitting to beheading Charles I on January 30 for a payment of £30 in half-crowns, while expressing remorse over violating a personal vow against harming the king and suffering physical torment from the moment of the blow.^[3] This document, titled The Confession of Richard Brandon the Hangman, portrays him as London's incumbent executioner, troubled by conscience and unable to forgive himself, with assistants Ralph Jones and William Loe present but not wielding the axe.^[4] As the common hangman since inheriting the role from his father in 1639, Brandon's professional experience aligned with eyewitness reports of a single, precise axe stroke severing the king's neck, a feat requiring skilled handling atypical of amateurs.^[7] Contemporary witnesses, including waterman William Cox, later testified that Brandon privately admitted to the act on multiple occasions, bolstering claims of his involvement despite the executioner's disguise of a mask and wig obscuring his face from the crowd at Whitehall.^[25] His resumption of duties on March 9, 1649—executing the Earl of Holland, Lord Capel, and the Duke of Hamilton for Parliament—further supports continuity in his role without evident disruption beyond a brief post-event malaise reported in some accounts.^[5] Counterarguments cite reports that Brandon initially refused the commission, motivated by royalist scruples or dread of divine retribution, even after Parliament offered £200 and compelled his attendance at Whitehall.^[2] These narratives emphasize the absence of direct eyewitness confirmation due to the masked figure, with some viewing the confession pamphlet as a potential forgery rushed into print by publisher Henry Ibbitson to exploit public interest in the regicide.^[2] While tradition and circumstantial records favor Brandon as the perpetrator, the lack of irrefutable proof sustains scholarly debate, with assessments like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography labeling him the "probable" executioner based on his official position and the era's execution practices.^[26]

Execution Details and Immediate Aftermath

Charles I ascended the scaffold erected outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall on January 30, 1649, around 2 p.m., under close guard by soldiers positioned to contain the crowd and ensure order. He addressed the assembly briefly, proclaiming his innocence, adherence to his conscience, and subjects' duty to God and country, though a cordon of guards muffled his words for most onlookers.^[27]^[22] Following a short prayer with Bishop William Juxon, Charles handed his cloak to the bishop, placed his neck on the low block, and extended his arms as a signal; the executioner struck once with the axe, severing the head in a single, clean blow that drew immediate groans from spectators. The executioner lifted the head by the hair, displaying it to the crowd while proclaiming, "This is the head of a traitor," as arterial blood issued from the trunk.^[27]^[28] The king's head was immediately placed with the body in a black velvet-covered coffin on the scaffold; later that evening, it was conveyed to St. James's Palace for embalming before private interment in a vault beneath the choir of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, without royal ceremony due to the republican regime's constraints.^[29]^[30] A purported account from the executioner claimed receipt of £30 in half-crowns within an hour of the act, paid by parliamentary officials amid the secured perimeter that deterred any potential intervention.^[3]^[28]

Death and Confession

Final Days and Demise on June 20, 1649

Following the beheading of Charles I on 30 January 1649, Richard Brandon performed no further executions as London's common hangman, effectively ending his active tenure in the role he had held since 1639. This cessation occurred amid widespread public revulsion toward participants in the regicide, though direct records of his daily activities in the intervening period are scant.^[4] Brandon died on 20 June 1649 in Whitechapel, London, approximately five months after the king's execution.^[4] His burial took place the following day, 21 June, in the churchyard of St. Mary Matfelon parish, without recorded ceremony or public notice, consistent with the enduring stigma of the executioner's profession that limited social integration and posthumous honors.

The 1649 Pamphlet and Claims of Remorse

The pamphlet The Confession of Richard Brandon the Hangman (upon his death bed) concerning his beheading his late Majesty, Charles the First, King of Great Brittain appeared in London in 1649, weeks after Brandon's death on June 20.^[3] It purports to record his deathbed admissions, including his role in the king's execution for a payment of £30 in half-crowns received within an hour of the beheading.^[3] The text details Brandon's receipt of items from the scaffold, such as an orange scented with cloves and a handkerchief from the king's pocket, which he later sold for 10 shillings, and claims he was given the king's bloodied doublet as a grim memento.^[3] It describes his immediate trembling on the scaffold and subsequent torments, including persistent neck pain, sleeplessness, horrifying visions, and a haunted conscience, culminating in expressions of regret for "cutting off the Lord's anointed."^[3] The pamphlet frames Brandon's remorse in strongly royalist terms, portraying the execution as a profane act against divine right and recounting the king's denial of forgiveness to his executioner, which exacerbated his spiritual anguish.^[3] It notes his burial with rosemary and a hangman's rope on the coffin, symbolizing his profession and unrepented state despite admonitions to repent.^[3] Such language aligns with contemporary royalist propaganda efforts to vilify the regicides amid the Commonwealth's instability, as evidenced by phrases invoking the king's majesty and pirate cries of "Vive la Roy" in the narrative.^[3] No original manuscript of Brandon's confession survives, and the pamphlet's anonymous authorship raises questions about its genuineness, with historians treating it as a historical artifact potentially fabricated or embellished by royalist sympathizers to stir remorse and delegitimize the republican regime.^[31] While it may draw from reports by Brandon's associates or witnesses to his final days, the lack of corroborating contemporary accounts beyond the pamphlet itself, combined with its dramatic supernatural elements and partisan tone, suggests it served propagandistic purposes rather than unvarnished testimony. Claims of haunting and unabsolved torment reflect broader cultural motifs of divine retribution post-regicide, but remain unverifiable.^[32]

Legacy and Historical Debate

Refusal to Pass Tools to Son

Following Richard Brandon's death on June 20, 1649, the hereditary line of the Brandon family in the office of London's common executioner, established by his father Gregory Brandon around 1600, terminated without continuation to a son or apprentice.^[5] The role passed instead to Edward Dun, known as "Squire Dun," marking a break in the familial succession that had persisted for two generations.^[33] This shift occurred amid the intense stigma attached to Brandon's reputed participation in the regicide of Charles I five months earlier, which historical accounts link to his documented remorse. Brandon's deathbed confession, published as a pamphlet in 1649, reveals a conscience tormented by the act: he described receiving £30 for the execution but suffering subsequent sleeplessness, physical torment, and spiritual dread, interpreting these as divine retribution for beheading the king.^[3] Such remorse, coupled with royalist backlash against regicides and their associates, likely contributed to the pragmatic or moral reluctance to perpetuate the trade within the family, as the position's viability depended on public tolerance and official appointment rather than inheritance alone. Folklore attributes this rupture to Brandon explicitly refusing to bequeath his axe and halter—the symbolic tools of the trade—to his heir, invoking fears of a curse tied to the king's blood, though primary records provide no direct evidence of such a bequest attempt or familial heir in poverty. The empirical outcome highlights the office's precarious continuity: Dun's appointment underscores how the role reverted to non-hereditary selection post-1649, with subsequent holders like John Ketch in 1663 facing similar instability amid political shifts.^[34] This lapse in Brandon control reflects causal realism in the trade's dependence on state sanction, where the regicide's moral weight eroded the prior pattern of father-to-son transmission without verified transmission refusal.

Assessments of Character and Role in History

![Confession pamphlet of Richard Brandon][float-right] Royalist commentators portrayed Richard Brandon as a base instrument of parliamentary tyranny, emphasizing the regicide's illegitimacy as an unlawful murder stemming from the king's divine right rather than any empirical justification for deposing absolutist rule.^[3] The 1649 pamphlet The Confession of Richard Brandon, purportedly detailing his remorse and divine torment post-execution, reinforced this view by depicting him as haunted by guilt, a narrative aligning with broader Cavalier propaganda framing the act as causal rebellion against monarchical order.^[3] In contrast, parliamentarian justifications treated the executioner as an anonymous functionary executing a legally ordained sentence against a king whose policies had empirically provoked civil war through intransigence on taxation and religion.^[2] Assessments of Brandon's character highlight a mix of professional competence and personal flaws, with early records accusing him of bigamy shortly after assuming his father's role in 1639, though he maintained efficiency in routine hangings without noted incompetence.^[35] No contemporary evidence indicates political zealotry; he appears as a tradesman motivated primarily by the £200 offered for the regicide, having initially refused the commission before relenting.^[2] Modern historiography views Brandon as a marginal figure whose obscurity was magnified by proximity to the regicide, with debates resolving toward his likely involvement on probabilistic grounds—his incumbency as London's hangman, the pamphlet's attribution, and payment records—rather than romanticized legends of outright refusal or heroic anonymity.^[2] Scholars prioritize such circumstantial data over moralizing embellishments, assessing his role as that of a reluctant professional enabling a transformative yet contested breach in constitutional norms, without ascribing deeper agency or ideology.^[35]

References

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Richard Brandon, the late Executioner and Hang-man, who beheaded his late Majesty, King of Great Britain, departed this life.
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