Regicide of criminology asserts that the punishment "should fit the crime", and should thus be proportionate and not extreme. This approach was spoofed by Gilbert and Sullivan, when The Mikado sang, ""My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime"". In common with earlier executions for regicides: In both the François Ravaillac and the Damiens cases, court papers refer to the offenders as a patricide, rather than as regicide, which lets one deduce that, through divine right, the king was also regarded as "Father of the country". Regicide The broad definition of regicide (
John Phelps (regicide) John Phelps (regicide) John Phelps was a Clerk and Registrar of the Committee for Plundered Ministers and of the High Court which tried Charles I of England for high treason in 1649. Not much is known about John Phelps' early life. He was born in about 1619 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 20 May 1636, describing himself as age 17, and the son of Robert Phelps of Salisbury. On 1 January 1648-9 he was appointed clerk-assistant to Henry Elsing, clerk of the House of Commons. Says Harper's Pictorial History of England, edition of