Execution of Charles I

Is P.S.W.E. aware that Mr. Hunter gives a tradition, in his *History of Hallamshire*, that a certain William Walker, who died in 1700, and to whose memory there was an inscribed brass plate in the parish church of Sheffield, was the executioner of Charles I.? The man obtained this reputation from having retired from political life at the Restoration, to his native village, Darnall, near Sheffield, where he is said to have made death-bed disclosures, avowing that he beheaded the King. The tradition has been supported, perhaps suggested, by the name of Walker having occurred during the trials of…