This is a life of John Cook, the bravest of barristers, whose bowels were publicly burned as punishment for sending the King to the scaffold. In 1649, no lawyer in the country would accept the brief of prosecuting Charles I. All packed their bags and disappeared to the country, except one, the forty-year old John Cook. The charge was treason - not, of course against himself, the monarch, but against his people - bringing evidence to show that Charles had begun wars which cost the lives of innumerable Englishmen and had ...
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This is a life of John Cook, the bravest of barristers, whose bowels were publicly burned as punishment for sending the King to the scaffold. In 1649, no lawyer in the country would accept the brief of prosecuting Charles I. All packed their bags and disappeared to the country, except one, the forty-year old John Cook. The charge was treason - not, of course against himself, the monarch, but against his people - bringing evidence to show that Charles had begun wars which cost the lives of innumerable Englishmen and had sanctioned murder, rape and pillage. Cook was a farmer's son from Leicestershire, who had studied at Oxford and travelled widely in Europe. conscience, and especially with reforming the old, barbaric legal system. His fate was sad. He had little sympathy with Cromwell's strict protectorate - and at the restoration in 1660, with the other 'regicides' who signed the king's death warrant, he was arrested, tried, and brutally hung drawn and quartered.
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