One of my nerdy hobbies is buying unpainted plastic figures and painting them. Sometimes I make dioramas.

This is a little diorama …the Execution of Charles I in 1649. The figures are made by an English company called Replicants.

The central figure is Charles I. The others are Executioner with axe and with one foot on the block, a Parliamentary Officer, Oliver Cromwell and a Clergyman.

I bought and painted these figures about fifteen years ago. I thought at the time that the King’s clothes should be purple but later discovered that he was wearing mostly black on the day of his execution.

Some other discrepancies. The Executioner is unmasked. But in reality, the Executioner and his assistant were both masked and never publicly named. At the time, a number of suspects were named…some claimed to be the masked man and others denied it.

The actual Block was not standard. Charles did not kneel at the block. Rather he lay down.

The name of the Bishop who gave Charles the Last Rites and accompanied the condemned man to the scaffold was William Juxon who became Archbishop of Canterbury at the Restoration of the Monarchy.