Charles I on his Way to Execution 'The night before his death Charles passed at St. James's Palace. From thence in the morning, with Bishop Juxon at his side, in the centre of a guard of soldiers, he walked, for the last time, through St. James's Park, to Whitehall, in front of which the scaffold was standing ready. The air was bitterly cold as the procession moved along through the leafless avenues of the Park.'

Crofts was a pupil of Meissonier and, like his master, specialised in military themes, being particularly drawn to incidents from the English Civil War. This picture was one of two which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883; the other, At the Sign of the Blue Boar, Holborn, showed the interception of incriminating letters from Charles I to Henrietta Maria by Oliver Cromwell. Of Charles I on his way to Execution the Art Journal observed that 'the cold January morning and the leafless trees of St James's Park are well rendered,' while F. G. Stephens, writing in the Athenaeum, thought the picture 'enriched by several characteristic incidents... Mr Croft's armour painting is the best part of his work.'

Like other tragic heroes and heroines (Mary Queen of Scots, Montrose, Marie Antoinette, etc.), Charles I was a popular subject in Victorian painting. The events surrounding his death naturally attracted the greatest attention; indeed Stephens, who had been reviewing for twenty-three years when he encountered Croft's production, could not refrain from remarking wearily that 'it would be a relief could one hope that Charles I will not go to execution again.'

The King's execution took place early on the morning of 30 January 1649. Anxious not to shiver and appear afraid, he wore two shirts, and he passed under the great Rubens ceiling, still in situ, which he had commissioned for the Whitehall Banqueting Hall, before stepping out through a window onto the scaffold. The dignity and self-control with which he faced his death resulted in a martyrology without parallel in English history.