The manuscript journals of the trial of Charles I: new evidence on their provenance and purpose

Abstract

Historians of the trial of Charles I will be familiar with the two copies of the manuscript journals kept in The National Archives of the U.K. and the U.K. Parliamentary Archives. Besides these manuscripts, two further copies of the trial proceedings are held in the Beinecke Library, Yale, and in the British Library. This article compares these versions to propose a tentative document history of the journals, suggesting that these manuscripts were produced for different purposes: what began as the basis for an authoritative public account of the trial later became a text intended for a more select legal audience.