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.
