Banqueting House, Whitehall room at Wilton House, to display Van Dyck's portraits of the aristocratic Pembroke family. Given the attention and effort which were lavished by Charles I on the Banqueting House, his end was not without irony. On the afternoon of 30 January 1649 he stepped out of a first floor window of Banqueting House onto the scaffold which had been erected outside for the purpose of his execution. The actual window no longer exists as it was not in the main hall but just outside it in an adjacent part of the building which has now gone and, pictured from the
High Court of Justice for the trial of King Charles I 9 March 1649 by the 'High Court of Justice'. In subsequent years the High Court of Justice was reconstituted under the following Acts. On 30 June 1654, Peter Vowell and John Gerard were tried for High Treason by the High Court of Justice sitting in Westminster Hall. They had planned to assassinate Oliver Cromwell and restore Charles II as king. The plotters were found guilty and executed. After the Restoration in 1660, all who had been active in the court that had tried and sentenced Charles I were targets for the new king. Most of those that were still alive