The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother to King Charles III, on suspicion of misconduct in office has come as a shock to many. Numerous articles in diverse media have described the arrest of a member of the royal family as “unprecedented”.
It has been argued that the last royal arrest was that of King Charles I (reigned from 1625 to 1649) by parliamentary forces in 1646. This episode famously ended with Charles’s execution in 1649. But although royal arrests had dwindled by the 17th century, Charles I’s was not the last.
In the kingdom of England and later the UK, a total of 58 arrested royals (34 males and 24 females) from the Norman conquest in 1066 up to the early 18th century can be identified. Of these, 19 were released, one escaped, 12 died in custody, 21 were executed, three vanished and two were murdered.
Mountbatten-Windsor is not the first sibling of the monarch to have been arrested. Perhaps the most well-known case is that of George, Duke of Clarence, younger brother of King Edward IV (reigned from 1461 to 1483), who imprisoned him for treason. The king stripped him of his titles, removed him from the succession and executed him in the Tower of London in 1478. According to legend, he was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine.
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