"After Charles tried to rule as an autocrat for eleven years, the outcome was civil war and his defeat and execution in 1649. To us, that execution ranks as the truly revolutionary event of English history. But to see revolutions as incidents rather than processes is misleading. Charles’ execution was not seen at the time as a revolutionary triumph, whether for democracy or for Parliament. It was rather, as its instigator Oliver Cromwell put it, a cruel necessity’ to secure the sanctity of the Petition of Right. If that required violence, so be it."