Thomas Harrison

Thomas Harrison was an English Parliamentarian soldier and political radical who rose to senior command during the civil wars. A committed religious Independent, he fought in major Parliamentarian campaigns and became associated with the army’s republican wing. He served as one of the commissioners at the trial of Charles I and signed the king’s death warrant in 1649.

Harrison later broke with Oliver Cromwell over the Protectorate and became associated with the Fifth Monarchists. After the Restoration of Charles II he was excluded from the general indemnity, prosecuted for regicide and executed in October 1660. Harrison was a senior Parliamentarian commander and one of the most prominent surviving signatories of Charles I’s death warrant to be executed after the Restoration. Thomas Harrison was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England and died in London, England.

Charles Spencer’s Killers of the King follows Thomas Harrison as one of the committed army radicals who accepted personal responsibility for the trial and execution of Charles I. Harrison’s signature on the king’s death warrant makes him a principal target after the Restoration, and Spencer uses his fate to show how the restored monarchy pursued the surviving regicides through arrest, trial and exemplary punishment.