Great Yarmouth MP Miles Corbet became the 59th and last signatory to the death warrant of King Charles I.
A Puritan lawyer and long-time ally of Oliver Cromwell in Parliament since his election to the House of Commons in 1639, he had no qualms about putting the monarch on trial.
Following the trial and conviction of the king in Westminster, Corbet joined Cromwell and others in signing the death warrant. Charles was beheaded. Eleven years later the monarchy was restored, and Charles II made it clear he wanted revenge against the ‘regicides’ who had killed his father.
Corbet fled to the Netherlands as the 60 or so surviving regicides were hunted down, imprisoned and put on trial. In a macabre turn of events Cromwell’s corpse, buried amid great pageantry just two years earlier, was dug up and hanged, drawn and quartered.
As for Miles Corbet, he was led into a trap at Delft, kidnapped and brought back to England. Condemned for treason, the unrepentant and still courageous MP was himself executed on April 19, 1662, at Tyburn.