Henry Smith (regicide) Henry Smith (regicide) Henry Smith (1620–1668) was an English Member of Parliament and one of the regicides of King Charles I. He was born in Withcote, Leicestershire in 1620; son of Henry Smith born in 1589 and Frideswide (Fritzjoyce) Wright. He studied at Oxford University and Lincoln's Inn. He married miss Holland. In 1640 he was elected MP for Leicestershire. In January 1649, as a commissioner of the High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I at the trial of King Charles, he was 19th of the 59 signatories on the death warrant of the King. After the
Regicide killed in battle by their subjects (for example Richard III), but none of these deaths are usually referred to as regicide. The word regicide seems to have come into popular use among foreign Catholics when Pope Sixtus V renewed the papal bull of excommunication against the "crowned regicide" Queen Elizabeth I, for—among other things—executing Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. Elizabeth had originally been excommunicated by Pope Pius V, in "Regnans in Excelsis", for converting England to Protestantism after the reign of Mary I of England. The defeat of the Spanish Armada and the "Protestant Wind" convinced most English people