Thomas Harrison ( soldier ) Major - General Thomas Harrison ( 1606 – 13 October 1660 ) sided with Parliament in the English Civil War . During the Interregnum he was a leader of the Fifth Monarchists . In 1649 he signed the death warrant of Charles I and in 1660 , shortly after the Restoration , he was found guilty of regicide and hanged , drawn and quartered . Life and work . The son of the mayor of Newcastle - under - Lyme , he moved to London where he was admitted to the Inns of Court as an attorney at Clifford ' s Inn . Whilst a lawyer he met Charles Fleetwood and Edmund Ludlow . He enlisted in Earl of Essex ' s lifeguard in 1642 and experienced his baptism of fire at the Battle of Powick Bridge First English Civil War . During the Civil War he declared for Parliament and served in the Earl of Manchester ' s army . He fought in many of the major battles of the war and joined the New Model Army in 1645 . By the end of the conflict he had risen to the rank of major - general and was a noted friend and supporter of Oliver Cromwell . He was elected to the Long Parliament for Wendover in 1646 . His regiment maintained strong leveller sympathies , mutining in 1647 . Second English Civil War . When conflict resumed he was wounded at Appleby in July 1648 . He had to return to London but was well enough to command the escort that brought the King to London in January 1649 . Harrison sat as a commissioner ( judge ) at the trial and was the seventeenth of fifty - nine commissioners to sign the death warrant of King Charles I . In 1650 , Harrison was appointed to a military command in Wales where he was apparently extremely severe . He was promoted to the rank of Major - General in 1651 and commanded the army in England during . He fought at the battle of Knutsford in August and at Worcester in September 1651 . By the early 1650s Harrison was associated with the radical Fifth Monarchists and became one of their key speakers . He still supported Cromwell and aided in the dissolution of the Rump Parliament in April 1653 . Harrison was a radical member of the Nominated Assembly ( Barebones Parliament ) that replaced the Parliament . When the Assembly was dissolved , Harrison and others refused to leave and had to be forced out by soldiers . Harrison was dismissed from the Army in December . Like many , he was outraged by the formation of the Protectorate and the elevation of Cromwell to Lord Protector . Under the Protectorate ( 1653 – 60 ) Harrison was imprisoned four times . Arrest and Trial . After Cromwell ' s death Harrison remained quietly in his home , supporting none of the contenders for power . Following the Restoration , Harrison declined to flee and was arrested in May 1660 . He was tried on 11 October 1660 . When asked whether he was guilty or not guilty and willing to take the blood of the late King Charles I on his head , Harrison " . . . not only pleaded not guilty , but justified the sentence passed upon the King ( Charles I ) , and the authority of those who had commissioned him to act as one of his judges . He plainly told them , when witnesses were produced against him , that he came not thither with an intention to deny anything he had done , but rather to bring it to light , owning his name subscribed to the warrant for executing the King , to be written by himself ; charging divers of those who sat on the Bench , as his judges , to have been formerly as active for the cause , in which he had engaged , as himself or any other person ; affirming that he had not acted by any other motive than the principles of conscience and justice ; for proof of which he said it was well known , he had chosen to be separated from his family , and to suffer a long imprisonment rather than to comply with those who had abused the power they had assumed to the oppression of the people . He insisted that having done nothing , in relation to the matter in question , otherwise than by the authority of the Long Parliament , he was not justly accountable to this or any other inferior Court ; which being a point of law , he desired to have council assigned upon that head ; but the Court over - ruled ; and by interrupting him frequently , and not permitting him to go on in this defense , they clearly manifested a resolution of gratifying the resentments of the Court upon any terms . So that a hasty verdict was brought in against him , and the question being asked , if he had anything to say , why judgement should not pass , he only said , that since the Court had refused to hear what was fit for him to speak in his defense , he had no more to say ; upon which Bridgeman pronounced the sentence . And that the inhumanity of these men may the better appear , I ( Edmond Ludlow ) must not omit , that the executioner in an ugly dress , with a halter in his hand , was placed near the Major - General , and continued there during the whole time of his trial , which action I doubt whether it was ever equaled by the most barbarous nations . But having learned to condemn such baseness , after the sentence had been pronounced against him , he ( Major - General Harrison ) said aloud as he was withdrawn from the Court , that he had no reason to be ashamed of the cause in which he had been engaged . " Execution . Major - General Harrison was the first of the Regicides to be executed by being hanged , drawn and quartered on 13 October 1660 . Harrison , after being hanged for several minutes and then cut open , was reported to have leaned across and hit his executioner — resulting in the swift removal of his head . His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire . Samuel Pepys wrote an eyewitness account of the execution at Charing Cross , in which Major General Harrison was dryly reported to be " looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition " . This account is also quoted on a plaque on the wall of the Hung , Drawn and Quartered public house near Pepys Street , where the diarist lived and worked in the Navy Office . In his final moments , as he was being led up the scaffold , the hangman asked for his forgiveness . Upon hearing his request Thomas Harrison replied , " I do forgive thee with all my heart . . . Alas poor man , thou doith it ignorantly , the Lord grant that this sin may be not laid to thy charge . " Thomas Harrison then gave all of the money that remained in his pockets to his executioner and was thereafter executed . Edmond Ludlow also provided an account of the execution at Charing Cross , " the sentence which had been pronounced in consequence of the verdict was executed upon Major - General Harrison at the place where Charing Cross formerly stood , that the King might have the pleasure of the spectacle , and inure himself to blood . According to Edmund Ludlow , " On the fifteenth ( 15 October 1660 ) , Mr . John Carew suffered there also , even their enemies confessing that more steadiness of mind , more contempt of death , and more magnanimity could not be expressed . To all who were present with them either in prison or at the place where the sentence was executed , they owned that having engaged in the cause of God and their country , they were not at all ashamed to suffer in the manner their enemies thought fit , openly avowing the inward satisfaction of their minds when they reflected upon the actions for which they had been condemned , not doubting the revival of the same cause ; and that a time should come when men would have better thoughts of their persons and proceedings . "