How king’s chair found new spot in town’s cottage hospital
» UNTIL 1928 if you lived in the vicinity of Moreton in Marsh and were taken poorly, you could have found yourself in the town’s cottage hospital where you would have had the opportunity to sit in King Charles I’s chair.
“How unlikely” you may be thinking. And you’d be right. But here’s the story and it comes with a word of warning. You may have to keep your wits about you as you read because the tale is a tad convoluted. Here goes.
Troubled by the inconvenience of a civil war, Charles I found himself in the Gloucestershire town of Moreton in Marsh on at least two occasions. It’s unlikely he had happy memories of either visit despite his accommodation being the White Hart in the High Street, a newish coaching inn in the monarch’s day and no doubt affording all home comforts.
It was through the inn’s cobbled entrance that Charles passed on July 2, 1644 to spend the night. News had reached him that the Battle of Marston Moor in far off Yorkshire had been lost by the Royalists and the king’s army had been depleted by 4,000 men killed and had another 1,500 captured.
The following year on August 30, King Charles was again a guest at the White Hart in Moreton, no doubt feeling even more glum. His cause had suffered blows with military defeats at Naseby in Northants and Langport in Somerset, the result being that his rival Oliver Cromwell decidedly had the upper hand. A few months later Charles was a prisoner and was put on trial for treason.
While the case was brought against him, the king sat in the comfy looking chair you see pictured here with his feet on the footstool. But of course, things didn’t go well for his majesty, who was executed before a baying crowd in London’s Whitehall.
The chair then came into the possession of William Juxon, Bishop of London and later of Canterbury, who kept it at his home in Little Compton, then part of Gloucestershire and three miles east of Moreton. It was handed down through his family as an heirloom until acquired by a Mr Sands. He bequeathed it to his female cousin who marred a surgeon in Birmingham named Cox.
Mr and Mrs Cox had a son named William Sands-cox who was a medical doctor and gave Charles I’s chair to Moreton in Marsh cottage hospital, along with three thousand pounds to provide more beds for patients.
And there the famous, or infamous chair remained until 1928 when to bolster its finances Moreton hospital sold the chair to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum for £550.
Still in the care of the V&A to this day, the catalogue entry for this exhibit describes the royal item of furniture as having a “beech frame, upholstered with purple velvet, greenblue satin and gilt nails, fringe of gold wire, silver gilt wire and gold coloured cotton, cushion of linen twill ticking, stuffed with feathers”.
It seems the chair was made by John Casbert, master craftsman who was paid £4 for his work.
It’s at this point that you have to make a decision about what you want to believe because the story diverges. There is documentary evidence that the chair was used by William Juxon, archbishop of Canterbury when he officiated at the coronation of Charles II on the restoration of the monarchy.
So did Juxon acquire the chair that King Charles I sat on during his trial, then use it again when his son Charles II came to the throne?
Or did Juxon buy the chair new and the story about it being the seat from which Charles I heard he was to face the death penalty is without veracity?
Who would have thought Moreton in Marsh was so closely connected with a right royal conundrum?